The electrician wasn’t able to install the audio-optimized AC outlets (the same ones in Shunyata’s AC power conditioners) because the slightly oversized Shunyata outlets didn’t fit in the rings he had installed in the floor. With home entertainment rooms reaching in excess of seven digits in some cases, it is prudent to have a specialist for each function of the system. Acoustic supply houses sell gypsum board composed of two layers of gypsum separated by a viscoelastic polymer (SoundBreak XP from National Gypsum, for example) that blocks more sound than does conventional drywall. 6 (and in some of the subsequent photos). (Builders and subcontractors don’t like to do things that are outside the ordinary, and quote very high prices to discourage custom work.) For a nominal additional cost you can use 5/8″ Type X Sheetrock on the wall outside the listening room and gain a few dB of additional transmission loss. Instead of the kick drum sounding like a low-frequency thump, the system conveyed details about the mechanism by which its sound was created, including the beater hitting the drum head and the resonant ring of the drum. Until you set up a pair of speakers in the room and listen, there’s no way to know how the room will sound. Thinner 12AWG wire is standard, but don’t let the electrician scoff at the need for 10AWG and talk you into the easier-to-manage 12AWG. Elitism actually has nothing to do with it. To realize the room’s full isolation (sound-proofing) potential, the door between the listening room and house must be carefully considered. I had always assumed that this was simply part and parcel of reproduced music—a characteristic of amplifiers being pushed, or the mechanical structures in loudspeakers reaching their limits. The channel’s springiness “floats” the drywall on the channel, reducing the energy transmitted from drywall motion to the framed walls and ceiling. Or you may prefer to relax at the Village Vanguard with John Coltrane or experience Pavarotti grace the stage at Carnegie Hall. The speaker also resolved very low-level textural and spatial cues that were lost by most loudspeakers. The finished and painted room looks just like any other room in the house—the acoustic infrastructure is completely invisible behind the drywall. I wanted to be able to listen to any music, at any hour of the day, at any listening level. (The electrician and project foreman both thought the AC power requirements were bizarre and unnecessary—not to mention their opinion of the Iso-Wall construction.) Next, a strip of self-adhesive “wall-bearing felt” is attached to the floor where the floor meets the walls. Absorption is necessary for frequencies under 80Hz, and as a standard in percentage terms, 80% diffusion and 20% absorption is ideal for two-channel applications. Remember that the resilient channel allows the interior surfaces of the listening room to bend but not vibrate, which is a key element in a constrained-layer damping system. When the wall is flexed by the acoustic pressure of low-frequency sound inside the room, sheer forces in the viscoelastic layer dissipate that energy as a minute amount of heat in the viscoelastic material. I brought to the house the system I’d been living with in the temporary space—Piega C711 speakers, First Watt F7 amplifier, Berkeley Alpha DAC Reference Series2 MQA, Aurender W20, Berkeley Alpha USB, Wireworld cable. AC power to the listening room is supplied by a separate sub-panel located right outside the listening room. The first step is to attach with construction adhesive and a few small nails a “perimeter gasket” to all the wall and ceiling edges—on the upper and lower stud plates along the ceiling and floor lines, on the stud edges where the walls meet, and around window and door frames. In designing an Iso-Wall installation for my room, Art Noxon specified an elaborate framing structure that would further reinforce the external side of the listening room walls. I went through 17 tubes of oversized (29-ounce) acoustical caulk. Two weeks after moving in I got the reference system up and running (see sidebar). 1). Moreover, a good-sounding room is a great boon to my work—it is a platform for evaluating products that is commensurate in quality with the products themselves. Incidentally, because I have two doors going into the listening room (the 300-pound isolation door to the house and a standard solid-core door to the garage) I was able to compare the sound-proofing effectiveness of the two doors. Qualifying the benefit is easy; it’s simply a matter of priorities. The walls and ceiling are turned into giant diaphragmatic bass absorbers. The Iso-Wall construction technique solves the three main problems with listening rooms: 1) it greatly reduces wall shudder; 2) prevents sound inside the listening room from getting out; and 3) absorbs excess bass energy by virtue of the flexible walls, turning them into giant membrane bass traps. Room 1 (Left): A lightly treated 2-channel mixing room with basic absorption and diffusion (typical in a project or home recording studio). In-walls are rarely a good option for two-channel because they don’t provide imaging, sound staging, and three dimensionality as authentically as floor standers, and if they do it’s via very complex DSP (digital signal processing) which compensates for the room but ultimately results in coloration. It’s remarkable that Iso-Wall addresses these three major problems with a single construction technique. You can also hang vinyl material inside the wall for even greater isolation. Typically, a dedicated listening room will be comprised of a high-quality set of loudspeakers, comprised of a left and right main speaker. I will just add, that in this case the test was not with my Luxman M-800A (actually not mine anymore…), but with the mentioned Tenor Audio 175S and with the turntable Avid Acutus Reference with Miyajima Laboratory Waza cartridge. I also used the Acrolink 8N-PC8100 Performante Nero Edizione cable. However, if it’s quality you’re after: an experience that is both exciting, visceral and as the artist intended it, then a dedicated listening room is what you seek. In order to keep with a long tradition, we also awarded Best Sound awards. Wall shudder also distorts music’s dynamics. ASC has taken the resilient-channel concept to a much higher level, modifying a conventional resilient channel by facing it with ASC’s WallDamp viscoelastic material. HFDG strongly suggests a dedicated room for those who have the space and resources but are cognizant of the impracticality of allocating a second room for two-channel in certain mediums. Make sure your integrator consults with a professional two-channel applications architect who can offer their services to ensure that your investment in home entertainment is well executed. One layer of standard drywall and one layer of moisture-resistant drywall will do the trick. The listening room selectively reinforces some frequencies and cancels others, with the frequencies reinforced and canceled determined by the room’s dimensions and the speakers’ and listener’s positions. This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2014  Authored By: Robert Entenmann. 4 and 5. If you hire out the work, I recommend that you be on-site at all times to make sure that the contractor is precisely following ASC’s installation procedures. This sense of life continued throughout the song, anchored by the tight kick drum and Kumalo’s extraordinary inventiveness in playing his instrument. It is essential that every drywall screw goes into the channel and not into a stud—an errant screw that penetrates the stud will “short out” the structure and reduce its effectiveness. Again, the drywall is screwed through the two drywall layers into the resilient channel, making sure that no screws penetrate the studs. With music playing at a moderate level inside this room, standing just outside the room you would be able to clearly hear and identify the music. Did I go far enough? Resilient channel is a “Z”-shaped strip of somewhat flexible metal that acts as a spring between the framing and the drywall. The specialized acoustic door I chose (the Studio 3D from Acoustical Surfaces) weighs 300 pounds, is 2 1/4″ thick, has a robust three-point latch system, and cost about $4000. Perspective By one standard, this room’s design and construction are expensive and elaborate. This wall construction is more effective in reducing the transmission of sound, but is expensive and consumes some of the room’s real estate. Incidentally, you can download a PDF of the Iso-Wall installation guide from ASC’s website. As home integration becomes more prevalent within the consumer electronics industry, the listening room is quickly loosing its priority and perhaps more importantly, its purpose. I would implore anyone reading this article that loves music as much as I, to ask themselves where their priorities lie? The wall that partially adjoins the kitchen and dining room is a double 2×6 wall with an unbridged air cavity. When standing in the hallway in front of the door with music playing at a high level in the listening room, you can detect that music is playing on the other side but it’s not nearly loud enough to disturb anyone. It has exceeded expectations in every way and, indeed, has been revelatory. AC Power The AC power to a listening room has a greater effect on sound quality than one would expect. But if you take that plunge and the stars align, a room specifically designed for optimizing sound quality can allow a high-end system to realize its greatest potential. This is our last house, and I wanted to get all the details right. Moreover, the sound of kick drums varied more from recording to recording than I’ve heard before, suggesting that their “sameness” I’ve experienced in the past was the room’s sonic signature imposed over the drum’s sound. Learn more. Every new LP or digital file was like a voyage of discovery, hearing detail in bass lines that had previously been blurred—the individual notes had been relatively undifferentiated in timbre and pitch. There’s a wide spectrum of framing and construction techniques that improve the room’s sound quality as well keep sound in the listening room from getting into the rest of the house. Furthermore, most home theater rooms are acoustically treated for their primary purpose, film! The aforementioned benefits are beneficial only insofar as they benefit the consumer. A room that is designed to diffuse sound is optimal for two-channel applications. Several years ago when reviewing a speaker with heroic cabinet construction, I used the term “self noise” to describe how the speaker didn’t seem to add a low-level “chatter” or chaotic noise to the music. The central area of each wall essentially “floats” on the flexible resilient channel rather than being rigidly affixed to the studs. You can see an overview of the entire Iso-Wall structure in Figs. After evaluating the possible construction techniques for my room I chose one that simultaneously solves all three of these problems. Our other points of reference were also the NOS Western Electric (speaker) and Bleden (interconnect) cables. Attaching the resilient channel to the ceiling is particularly challenging for one person. I hit an undamped stud with a hammer and listened to the ring. Convenience is what drives the trend to combine one’s listening room with their film room. the scale of the presentation, is above average and it is difficult to achieve, even in very good systems based on an analog sound source; usually when it does happen the source is a high quality reel-to-reel. I then got another electrician to modify the existing floor-plug rings to accept the Shunyata AC outlets. A standard 2×4 wood-framed wall (16″ on-center) filled with insulation and with 1/2″ gypsum board (drywall) on both sides is specified as STC-35—not a very high value. After the insulation had been blown into the walls, I started the Iso-Wall installation in earnest. The Sound of Pictures: Listening to the Movies, from Hitchcock to High Fidelity (English Edition) Backstage Secrets: On the Road with the Rock Band RUSH (Home Use) Eine Nacht in Venedig Fidelity (High Mix) The 2018-2023 World Outlook for High Fidelity (Hi-Fi) Systems Dark Side of the Moon. High-fidelity: Webster's Timeline History, 1931 - 2007: 28,95€ 2: High Fidelity: 1,29€ 3: The 2021-2026 World Outlook for High Fidelity (Hi-Fi) Systems: 895,00€ 4: The Sound of Pictures: Listening to the Movies, from Hitchcock to High Fidelity (English Edition) It was thus with great anticipation that I listened to the first music in the new room. This is also the reason, that the HRS-120, and other loudspeakers from this company, MUST happen in our listening room, and not only in an audio salon. After the bass clarity and dynamic fidelity, the next most dramatic and musically significant aspect of the room’s performance is the absence of this phenomenon. The pursuit of fidelity in music reproduction has been a lifelong endeavor for me, ever since my brother Stephen introduced me to the joy of music at the age of 12. Called the ASC Iso-Wall System, it is a building method that achieves excellent isolation of the listening room (sound proofing), nearly eliminates wall shudder, and absorbs excess bass. Kick drum, the rhythmic foundation of much music, had a solidity and dynamic impact that were startling. In addition, the room is acoustically isolated from the rest of the house, saving my wife from being subjected to my musical tastes (which admittedly aren’t for everyone). High Fidelity Design Group employs seasoned professionals who will work closely with your integrator to make certain that the utmost attention to detail is paid to integrating a quality two-channel system into your home entertainment environment. As Art Noxon explains in the sidebar, however, soundproofing and optimizing audio quality inside the listening room is more complex than simple soundproofing. I had the feeling that an artificial limit had been lifted from the music, allowing its full dynamic expression. So great possibilities for this Audiophile listening room. Fig. I was thus able to listen to the effect of the custom AC outlet independently of any other variables. As massive as this door is (it feels like opening and closing a bank vault), it’s still the weak spot in the room’s isolation. Their sound vibrates in us just like when listening to live instruments, especially if we are in a small room with them - just like in our listening rooms. However, achieving ideal acoustics for realistic music reproduction and presentation is an altogether different venture. I know people who have spent on their AC ground more than I spent on my entire room—it involved, in part, a copper ground rod buried in an electrolytic slurry of precise chemical composition that must be constantly kept moist. Planning the Room: Size and Dimensional Ratio The first step in any room design is choosing the room’s size and dimensional ratios—the ratio of the length to the width to the height. Given the enormous sonic improvements I heard, I can imagine that the glued-and-screwed walls and elaborate framing structure Art Noxon specified would have elevated the sound quality to another level. Identical lengths ensure that each component in the audio system sees the same ground potential. In my previous house I had compared dedicated AC lines and custom outlets to stock AC with stock outlets, but never to just the outlets themselves. I also would have hired someone to help me with the installation; it’s a huge amount of work for one person, particularly one whose day job is largely sitting at a computer. This is advantageous because the surrounding rooms’ ceiling framing helps to reinforce the listening room walls and give them greater structural rigidity. You’re now ready for the second and final layer of drywall, which is also installed vertically and with its seams offset from those of the first layer. Although I installed the Iso-Wall system myself (except for hanging the drywall) it was a much bigger job than I anticipated. But it was no match for the acoustic isolation door. Would the room sound any better than a conventional room? I did, however, adhere to Art Noxon’s specification that I damp the 2×6 studs by attaching strips of 5″-wide and 1/2″-thick plywood to the side of each stud, with two strips of ASC’s WallDamp, a self-adhesive viscoelastic damping material (Fig. Wilson Audio Specialties Chronosonic XVX Loudspeaker, Subsonic Subwoofer, and ActivXO Crossover, Schiit Audio Modius DAC and Magnius Preamplifier/Headphone Amplifier, Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2019 : Loudspeaker, Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2019 : Digital Electronics, An Interview with John Bring of Cable Support Plate, The Absolute Sound’s High-End Audio Hall of Fame | 2020 Inductees, Lauren Daigle’s Grammy Award Winning Album “Look Up Child” to be released December 11 in 45RPM LP Format, The Absolute Sound’s Buyer’s Guide to Electronics 2017, The Absolute Sound’s Top Picks in High-End Audio and Music 2017, The Absolute Sound’s Buyer's Guide to Affordable High-End Audio 2017, Hank Williams: Pictures from Life’s Other Side. The plan included other non-standard and labor-intensive framing techniques. In practice, the listening room’s dimensions are also influenced by real-world considerations such as the amount of real estate you’re prepared to commit to the room and how the room fits into the floorplan of the rest of the house. However, if it’s quality you’re after: an experience that is both exciting, visceral and as the artist intended it, then a dedicated listening room is what you seek. A small rectangle of WallDamp viscoelastic material (called a StudPad) is located between each stud and the dRC-1 channel to help damp vibration transfer (Fig. The room is now ready for surface treatments. Watch for upcoming reviews. The Absolute Sound is the world’s preeminent source of expert reviews, features, and commentary on high-performance audio and music. I’ve mentioned this small sample of materials and techniques to illustrate that you can dial-in the amount of isolation you need, and balance it against your budget, with great precision. The majority of home theaters are completely over deadened (far in excess of 20%), and for good reason: movies have very intense bursts of low and high frequencies, such as explosions, propagating contemporaneously into the theater. Chalk lines snapped on the drywall are essential to avoiding this problem. Between the stud dampers, the damping rectangles between the resilient channel and the studs, the damping material on the channel, and the damping between the layers of sheetrock, there are several hundred pounds of ASC WallDamp viscoelastic material built into the room. I’ve been reviewing high-end audio equipment for 30 years, and for 30 years I’ve hauled big and heavy gear through the front door of a house. What details had I overlooked? Building the room was a small price to pay for realizing a place specifically tailored to reviewing and enjoying music with wonderful fidelity for the rest of my days. The channel is laid out in horizontal strips across the studs and screwed to each stud it crosses. Dec 29, 2019 - 809 Likes, 21 Comments - #w_s_d (@worldsoundigest) on Instagram: “#Dynaudio #Confidence C4 #speakers driven by a full #McIntosh electronic setup #hifi #highend…” Some of the transient’s acoustic energy is turned into structural resonance of the wall, diminishing the transient’s attack and thus the sense of suddenness and dynamic life. Building a serious room—one in which I will enjoy music for the rest of my days—is a logical and natural extension of everything I’ve done in my life. For greater isolation, consider installing a full-on studio isolation door. The next step is to apply WallDamp Strips (1.5″ by 48″ by 1/16″ thick) along the perimeter edges of each plane of drywall, around the wall perimeters, door and window openings, and over the vertical drywall seams. My older brother Stephen introduced me to music when I was about 12 years old. It’s a job in itself to clean up the backing paper from these strips, squares, and rectangles, but it has to be done or you’ll end up with a floor literally covered in it. I recently realized a lifelong goal of building a serious listening room and will share my experience with you. Back at the raw-framed listening room, I conducted an experiment to understand the effect of the stud dampers. The thinner wire will limit instantaneous current delivery to the power amplifiers. the Siltech Triple Crown cables. If your priority is economics and space, then integrating your listening room into your home theater is the only option. 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