The perfect listening room

Hello Graham,

That’s very kind. We were in Brighton today and will come again and would love to take you up on your kind offer.

Best wishes

That’s great, Dev. I have lots of LPs, but do bring along any of your own that you would like to hear! (I can’t play CDs at present, as Audio T are waiting for Naim to try to find replacement transport mechanisms,)

(And do bring the delightful young lady in your Profile photo, if she’s into these ‘boys toys’!)

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Easy….get a 500 year old building like mine. Nothing is flat or square.

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One potential problem will be all the big glass windows.

Is there a way to get acoustic curtains, if such things exist, in order to reduce Reflection of sound waves.

Or just heavy lined curtains, or something to damp things down.

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They do! I had these in my last dedicated cinema room. They weigh a tonne. The back is rubber with lead threads woven in and the patterns are basically a choice of block colours. Mine were black velvet. I had them made to order for two windows floor to ceiling and cost me about $2000 fifteen years ago. They deaden sound in and out as well as blocking 100% light.

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My listening living room getting there. Wallpaper and acoustic ceiling tiles in.

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Robert Harley’s guide to room treatment in a dedicated listening room that he has built in his house:

Dimensional ratios are key.

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I think I used the same tool early on and although my three dimensions are all very different, it wasn’t great. But you build the home within the constraints of cost, time and materials you have.

Though it is fairly firmly in the bolt area.

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Totally agree non parrallel walls and ceiling would help to reduce standing waves…a bit like Laurence Dickies approach to backwave damping… the trick is not to over absorb yet get reverb right…and not to over drive the room

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“Bolt investigated the average modal spacing to try and achieve evenly spaced modes, but using the average mode spacing is not ideal, and the standard deviation of the mode spacing is a better measure. Ratios of 2:3:5 and 1: 21/3:41/3 (1:1.26:1.59) were suggested, but Bolt also noted that there is a broad area over which the average modal spacing criterion is acceptable. (Note, this later ratio appears to be often rounded to the commonly quoted figures of 1:1.25:1.6).”

https://hub.salford.ac.uk/sirc-acoustics/architecture-and-building-acoustics/room-sizing-for-studios/#:~:text=Ratios%20of%202%3A3%3A5,1%3A1.25%3A1.6).

The links in this post of mine in the very useful Speaker placement guide thread lead to spreadsheets presenting results of Salford University’s research, where you can find multiple best and next best ratios, for three different nominal room sizes - pick the nearest size to your own (they found that the best performance ratios were somewhat room size related). When I was planning reconstruction of a room, with multiple options, I found these spreadsheets very good for finding what would work best within the constraints of maximum available dimensions.

I would normally recommend a heat pump - they are very efficient, and can maintain both dry and warm air. In a listening room, however, the sound of the interior unit cycling air over the heating/cooling bars may be a distraction

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There’s a solution to that too. For soundproof rooms, there are decoupling adapters that separate the AC from the room. Ditto active air filters. In my room, the AC is just normal because I don’t expect to use it more than a couple weeks a year. But the picture shows two whitish wall mounted fixtures. Those are sound proofed active air filter/exchange units that block sound in and out while cycling in fresh air.

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I’ve been tinkering again and come up with a rough idea for an off square design, not sure if it would improve acoustics but certainly gets away from the standard rectangular/square of the previous two options.

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Franc KUZMA’s Listening Room.


I recognise Karan amps. The other are Zanden, not?

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And a nice rack! Do you know what it is?

I was pointing out that there’s a video on Youtube that shows Franc KUZMA’s Listening Room but I don’t think the admin liked the link to Youtube so it was removed.

Anyway nothing stopping people going to Youtube and searching for the video.

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No, but maybe he has done it himself? Nice, agree.

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I think he says there’s a lot of wool insulation/sound proofing in the walls, but it’s a couple of weeks since I saw it.