I’ve now made my second trip to Roy’s new purpose-built listening room in a new country. Dating from around 1632, the house was originally a stone-built winery and conjoined barn. During my first visit, shortly after Roy had escaped Brexit for the French countryside, the main listening room was still a shell with no lighting other than handheld torches. It was more a dungeon than a music room, and only my confidence in Roy’s determination and energy gave me reason to hope this room had a bright future. A year later, when I visited again, it was a fully functional listening room ready for an equipment change and a volunteer to help shift very large objects about. The evolutionary development is obvious from when you first approach the house. It’s located in a village, not a town or a city. There are no major highways nearby -- not even close. The home is situated on a short and narrow street where the (very infrequent) traffic is unlikely to exceed 10mph without busting an axle. One side of the street has homes built up close to the pavement in a style common to French villages, but Chez Roy has a comfortable setback, a tall stone wall along the street and a deep courtyard and garden area between the wall and the building. Prior to my first visit, Roy had described in detail the steps being planned to transform the "barn" into the main listening room. But when I arrived for the first time, it was obvious that this was nothing like any barn in my experience. It’s not just the two-foot-thick stone walls; it’s the fact that the barn is a direct extension of the main house. The size of these new digs allows for three separate listening rooms, named, by Roy, in descending order of size, the Music Room, the Studio and the Reading Room. All three are, by most standards, large listening rooms, with the Music Room of grand proportions and the other two merely grand by comparison to my room and that of most audiophiles.
When I walked into the finished Music Room for the first time, Roy casually remarked on how low the noise floor is inside. The observation was redundant, however, as I had already been struck by the total lack of incidental noise, a space so quiet it almost seemed like a pressure drop. At home I tune out the constant background sound of traffic, hum from electrical appliances in other parts of the house, passing aircraft and myriad other sources of background noise that leak through the walls and windows. At home, even when local gardeners are not operating leaf blowers, the best I can achieve in my listening room is a decibel reading of between the high 20s and the mid 30s (depending on which dB meter app I use). I didn’t have to pull out my iPhone to know that it was significantly lower in the Music Room. Obviously, the rural setting is a big factor, but on top of that the massive stone construction seals this room off from the world. Over the next few days it was clear that this kind of aural ease, resulting from my brain not having to sort out the extraneous sound from the music, not only made listening a more pleasurable, relaxed and relaxing experience, but also brought a special, lucid clarity to the music, making nuances of both musical and system performance more apparent and important. The Music Room started out too large for a proper listening space, at 21’ wide and 39' long. Thus, Roy built a room within a room, constructing a new back wall of hollow cement blocks filled with concrete at one end of the length, cutting it to 31’. The rear wall carries a full-width adjustable absorber, constructed from carpet felt spaced away from the wall, similar to the heavy drapes used in many concert halls and recording studios. At the other end of the room, a plastered wall (behind the speakers) carries a dispersive patch of nine RPG Skylines camouflaged by a fabric graphic of a Dexter Gordon album cover. The existing side walls are crudely pointed stone, creating a random reflective area, with depth variation up to four inches or more. These original walls are neither perfectly vertical nor parallel, breaking up room nodes. These walls are fitted with a frame for sliding/removable EchoBuster panels to handle first reflections.
Construction of a false ceiling built with double-thickness wood boards, deep insulation and more boards on top lowered the ceiling height for 13'. The roof joists were allowed to show through, helping break up the surface. A velocity choke "kite" is flown from the ceiling, surrounded by a carefully randomized array of large (and heavily damped) industrial-style pendant lamps, positioned so that each one is at a different height to kill flutter echoes in the upper volume of the room.
The floor is concrete, but split into three physically separate zones, one supporting the speakers, one for the system components and the remaining for the rest of the floor. The system slab is large enough to accommodate four standard rack bays, although normally larger amps are situated on the floor itself or amp stands. It is located in Roy’s preferred position at the side of the room, rather than between the speakers. The floor surface is solid bamboo, glued directly to the three concrete slabs, and maintaining the physical separation between them. The dedicated AC supply and clean grounds are mounted, decoupled from the wall and directly behind the system. Room acoustics are further treated with record storage, a thick wool carpet and a couch, all carried over from the UK listening room. My time in the Music Room was something of a working holiday, reinstalling the big Wilson Audio Alexx ($109,000 per pair)/Thor’s Hammer ($24,000 each) system that had vacated pride of place to enable the review of another set of behemoths. Just slotting the speakers back into their preferred positions, already established and clearly marked by Stirling Trayle, was not nearly as quick and easy as it sounds, but the results were well worth the effort. I’ve heard a lot of systems with large subwoofer assemblies (although never Thor’s Hammers), but I have never heard such seamless integration of subwoofers, such overall transparency before. Unlimited in speed and weight and completely integrated, Thor clearly wears his belt of strength when enclosed in a room of stone walls. With both Thor and Nordost’s Odin 2 in residence, this Music Room could be mistaken for Asgard, one of the nine worlds of Norse mythology, ruled by Odin and protected by Thor. While not completely fooling me into mistaking them for Wilson WAMM MCs, the Alexxes, with the subs and the system dialed in, do a better job of just getting out of the way of the music, of the recording, of the original acoustic. The new room offers deeper, more powerful bass and doesn't lose any of the texture or pitch definition that were so apparent in the original version. That probably reflects the Music Room’s slightly larger dimensions, its asymmetry and the parallel, as opposed to vaulted, ceiling. It probably also reflects the accumulated experience of creating these two, conceptually similar rooms.
Compared to the Music Room, the two smaller rooms are positively modest by comparison, but only by comparison. Even the Studio, at 18’ wide by 19’ 7" long by 9’ 4" high, has a third again more space than my listening room, and I’d wager it’s larger than the listening rooms of many, if not most, readers. No two walls are parallel and the quoted numbers are the maximum values, with the room tapering by 15" on the narrow axis and 12" on the other. What is more, the room is heavily vented (four doorways and a large window) and highly irregular, with a chimney breast, two large beams dividing the ceiling and extensive molding, including curvature of all the upper edges and corners. The floor is solid, with modern wooden flooring laid straight onto the original tiling. The walls are all stone and are roughly two feet thick. I had no opportunity to listen in the Studio -- there are only so many hours in the day and with the Music Room just next door, the temptation was simply too great to resist -- but I did listen in the Reading Room.
Although in some respects a secondary listening room, the Reading Room, at 26’ 8" long, 18’ wide and 9’4" high, is still twice the size of my own listening room. The room features three bass traps in all, one utilizing the fireplace behind the left speaker, one the truncated alcove behind the other speaker, and the third, a large area-spaced panel well behind the listening seat. The rear wall panel employs a large area of acoustic foam, spaced away from the wall to increase its absorption. The other two traps exploit the room’s peculiarities. The one in the grate places a thick block of foam behind an MDF baffle, while the one in the alcove is built into a staggered stack of six IKEA Kallax storage units, foam squares being used to close the rear of selected shelf spaces, behind a row of books. By varying the number of shelves closed off as well as the thickness of the foam (here and in the grate) it is possible to fine-tune the bass response with considerable precision, while the staggering of the Kallax units and the books housed in them adds a significant dispersive element to the room. Although the Reading Room is situated upstairs, the floor is surprisingly solid, having been reconstructed from hollow blocks almost 10" thick. It makes for a rigid overall structure so further record and book storage has been added to increase general absorption and help calm the acoustic, along with various random objects placed in and on the Kallax storage units to help with dispersion. A stack of RPG Skylines on the wall between the speakers, along with carefully considered absorption in key locations (especially a single RoomTune DeLuxe, carefully adjusted and placed to balance the window drape it faces), firm up the soundstage and complete the acoustic treatment. Being situated almost directly above the main AC inlet for the house has allowed Roy to adopt a slightly unusual solution to system power supply. An eight-way power block is hard-wired to a dedicated and specially selected domestic consumer unit, which interfaces the main fuse boards to the incoming AC. A parallel domestic supply is also provided, using UK 13A sockets both for completeness/comparison and also to allow use of existing UK-terminated cables. Finally, there is also a parallel clean ground, connected to the ground socket on the power block.
For most listeners, this would be a dream listening room. It’s large enough to accommodate some pretty large speakers (assuming you can get them up the stairs) but sufficiently manageable in size so that you avoid constant maintenance in an effort simply to keep the place tidy. It is also a much more recognizably domestic environment, its modern décor and furnishings complemented with limited and pretty subtle acoustic treatment. But while it might appear like a more normal listening room (similar in many ways to a living room like my own) it sounds way more natural, even and uncongested than the average enthusiast’s listening room. And despite the colorful sofas and artwork, one look at the array of equipment in residence (and stored in the multiple large cupboards) leaves you in no doubt that this is a serious workspace -- as well as a comfortable room in which to enjoy your music. What’s my takeaway from this visit to a work
that’s still in process? Only Pinocchio could leave the listening rooms (and the
systems they contain) without admitting to at least a modicum of envy -- that goes without
saying. But what really impresses me is the sheer stamina it takes to make three listening
rooms at this level run smoothly. If I were confined to the Music Room, only leaving for
brief visits to the attached lavatory, while someone occasionally pitched chunks of meat
my way for sustenance, I still don’t see how I would find the time to vacuum, dust,
clean the countless sets of contacts, adjust equipment (and swap it in and out) and still
occasionally listen to music that didn’t relate directly to a review. Never mind
tending to a second or third room also jammed full of equipment. I felt so humbled that
after I returned home, I finally ended years-long procrastination and switched out the
Romex from my dedicated line for some audio-grade cable. |
