It is interesting development going on in my listening room. Amy the Kitten is making her hands dirty to convert our man-cave nerdy house into something that we as a family would enjoy. With all horror that this move would inflict in the heart of a heavy-core audio person I have to admit that I do like so far what she is doing. One of the walls in the listening room is broken and her baby grand, her music and her cute viola are placed in the space. It made room even larger than before. I still work on acoustic treatment of the new space and I will post the picture what I feel I am gone.

With time goes by we have a number of other projects how we could modify the appearance of the listening room. It might sound sacrilegious but Amy has beautiful taste and capacity in decoration field, she is sensible and recognizes arguments (it I subdue her unfortunate decoration spontaneousness) and she is respectful in term of reasons – a seldom quality for a woman.

Some far the only change she inflicted to our listening room was creation the space for her musical instruments in the room and change my listening chair to a listening couch.  The last one was not negotiable for her. I enjoy it but when I explain to her about time alignment and necessity to sit in specific manner she disobey and keep posturing herself within the couch like a monkey on a tree. I work on that part of her listening habits, not too successfully so far.

We have a plan to remove wall-to-wall carpet from listening room and to put there parquet with mandatory Oriental rug. I have no problem with it and I even like it but I need to formalize this project in context of the playback to live on hard surface – it will be many changed that I need to force. The most attractive from audio perspective is that I will be able to drive Macondo across the room on some kind of good rolls in my search of DPoLF.

The most interesting change however is not what I said above but what is coming next. Amy has some kind of girlish obsession with plants. She sticks them into all imaginable places and the next target of her attention is Macondo. She asked me if I would like to decorate Macondo with some plants.  With all ridiculousness of this proposal I have to admit that I like the idea a lot.  A few years back I was visiting an installation in Manhattan. The guy was a full Goto setup that was located in the main room but it was very tactfully almost hidden in a “jungle” of very cleverly positioned plans. The speakers and amplifiers were almost invisible and the music was sound like it come from a forest. I am sure that it would not be possible in my situation but I very open to experiment with it and to see where it might go.

JJ Triode wrote:

I predict in the long run you will have better Sound with a hardwood floor.  Of course it will require some adjustments but that was my experience when I made this change years ago.  Much easier for cleaning etc. too.   Rather than say any more in detail let's wait to see what you find.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I can’t predict what sound will I get with hardwood floors and how it will be different from think wall-to-wall carpet that I have now. Currently I have architect wood joists 30 feet long running at the bottom of the floor. Then I have a sheet of 1.25” plywood board, than 1/4 sheet of foiled plywood, than then 1” plywood. Atop I have carpet with regular pads under it. If I lay the typical contemporary American parquet then it will be stable to the top layer of plywood, not glued as they use to do 30 years back. So, the floor will not be more solid and it is will then very little stronger.  I am sure it will be another layer of rugs atop of parquet and my idea is that with reflection/abortion of the rag I will be able to moderate the “live top” vs. “live bottom” acoustics in the room. As now I can’t do anything at the bottom as it is dead die to the heavy absorption from my wall-to-wall carpet. It migh be interesting to play with “bottom liveliness” if I have a chance….

decoud wrote:

Sugatsune make these integrated devices that could work well: I have used their kit before. http://www.sugatsune.com/products/ProductDetails.cfm?CATID=12&SUBCATID=2&PRODUCTID=AF-50%2F65  But unless the contact points are very broad you will have issues with marking the floor, except if you make it out of brown ebony or something comparably hard.

We have made a decision that we do go for the hardwood floors in listening room. We end up with unfinished quarter sawn red oak with Vermister" waterbase urethane. We will try to render the project in September.

This will imply to remove the whole installation (with exception of midbasshorns), disconnect everything and clear up room as the way is I just move into the house.  This is a lot of work but it also some interning opportunity.

Since, I move in this house 2.5 years back there were a lot of chargers that took place, different from my initial intends to use of this listening room. Using the listening room for over 2 year I have developed some habits that might not be what I initially thought. In addition over the last few months we knocked two walls in the listening room: one that I described during the Piano accommodation project and another that we did last week. That all very dramatically changed the feel of the listening room, in my view it made it better.

Also, the last few months Amy spread her touch to the listening room. Amy does not share my interests about Audio but she does endorse and very enthusiastically support my concept of listening room. She got her Master of Viola from Yale, plays more or less regularly actively with local people and she is the most praised, beloved, inspiriting, stimulating and sweetest listening companion I even had privilege to share my sweet spot. We hooked up as two Bruckner-loving mamzies and we very much in our listening room to stay. So, her presence made us to revise some postulates and requirements we impose to our listening room.  Amy very likes the notion of dedicated room, solely designated to consumption of music, still she love that this “dedicated” room is not isolated in house but organically imbedded into the living environment. She altered the room with her live music requirement and with her idiosyncratic sense of esthetics.  My initials sentiment regarding her perception of esthetics was not very welcoming. Her undergraduate degree was in medieval history and she has appreciation of medieval expressivity. To me it felt a bit “too catholic” but as my appreciation of her grew I got much softer to all of it. Now I am full aboard and I am very much like her taste and her capacity to convert my nerdy main cave into a beautiful Amy-inspired listening room.  The hardwood floors and Asian rugs was very much her project initially but turn out to be something that I want very much as well.

We are planning to modify the sweet spot to accommodate multiple people, to create options for “resting” and entertaining at the listening spot, to have a provision to have drinks and meals at the sweet spot, to be able to have sex in there or just a comfortable spot to browse internet while listening some Bach. I am thinking about cables accommodation, the need for new power entire in the floors.  The layout of Macondo will not change but the way how I bring cables to it will change: I juts need next halls in the floor in the new locations.

I still consider powering my entire installation from Pure Power regenerator but I do consider locating it at different spot. I also very seriously consider to put Milq in the basement and to have the speaker cables from under the floor. The reason behind it is that if we have kids than I would not like to have two very hot and very dangers Milqs sitting in the mid of the listening rooms. There are very many reasons why it would NOT be a good idea to hide Melquiades under the floors, I do know all cons and pros and I am considering all options.

Jorge wrote:

If you put the Melqualdes in the basement you can put a smoke detector very close and maybe a camera and a monitor to keep an eye on them. NOw you cold also  make a statement piece and put some sort of medieval looking cages around them...

Is there a pill for that too? Seriously, it would be very interesting to hear what solution you come up with because I have converted from listening music solo to a small number of audience (friends). So much that I listen by myself much less often. I believe is not possible to make the sweet spot bigger but it is possible to adjust the room acoustics with new surfaces (walls or curved panels), objects, sound absorption and diffusion to make the room sound more balanced and sweet spot be "diffused". 

With directionality of horns it would be interesting to see what approach you use for this and how you treat room surfaces in relation to speaker and listening area location. One may say that there is no point to describe one room and use this as a guide for others, but with horns I believe it is not the case. If we have similar goals (diffusion of sweet spot in room) then certain techniques will take us in similar direction when comes to unfocusing the sound energy.

p.s. kids proofing is not just moving amps "away", believe me I have one year old son. they will pull cables, remove tubes when they cool down, push speakers, and play with turntables. Romy, do not worry about this stage yet because if you do... Trust me, do not worry about this yet.