Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

There will be some kind of big rug.

Also one wall is an opening into the rest of the house, it's quite open plan, so that will have a full blackout curtain. Also behind the sofa is a bay window which will also have a black out curtain, so effectively the rear wall and one side wall will be soft materials.

Then right opposite the speakers will be a big fat lump who can also absorb resonant frequencies.

After a month or so I will then run the DIRAC room calibration and see what difference that makes to the overall sound.

Hah!
DIRAC is meant to be pretty good but you can’t beat physics with it. All that money on components, it might be worth chucking a few broadband/bass traps up if it’s a dedicated room. The curtains and rug should help with flutter but you’ll still get ringing and smearing.
I knew I needed them since moving here but I’m still shocked how much difference the panels in my studio room have made - everything sounds more expensive!

The whole extension has now been tiled, electrics are going in and kitchen is installed next week. It is basically an empty shell. If you clap it resonates for about 6 seconds at the moment. The place needs some soft furnishing!

Go Russian.

Put the carpets on the walls?

@dancing james Let us know how those R7's sound.

Fucking amazing would be my guess.

DJ, can I pop in for a listen next time I'm up your way?

Somehow I assumed that Steely Dan's repertoire is part of everyone's auditory firmware — your remark makes me realize how long ago it is! I hope you enjoyed. It just gets better with time.

Of course.

So what you’ve built there is a reverb chamber!

pretty much, but it is completely unfurnished so hoping things will improve when soft items go in

I had a couple of victorian screens hanging around from a job years ago. They have worked very well at damping down the reverb in my room by having them behind the speakers. They are easy enough to make and you can cover them with almost any kind of material. Worth considering as a flexible 'decorative' solution to reverb either on the front or back wall.

It's worth noting that although Dirac has a time domain element it's becoming accepted by dsp tweakers that eq'ing higher frequencies is counter productive. Added to the problem of physically curing standing bass waves the design of your room and position of the speakers still counts for a lot.

For example your speaker in the position it's photographed in would theoretically be boosted by 6db in the bass range through wall proximity. 6db being 4 times the power. Interesting if you look at the size of a Helmholtz resonator that would be required to dampen a 50hz bass peak.

I have the Yamaha kit - we have 3 amps in our house, none of the standalone speakers but from what I've seen they're great.

Living room is the RN602 with Dali Zensors
Bedroom the WXC50
Housemates room (yamaha amp, can't remember model) with some CA speakers.

The thing works so so well. We can put a record on downstairs and play it throughout the whole house.

Also the Yamaha amps have the ability to connect to other brand speakers through spotify, we have a klipsch speaker in the kitchen that will also connect.

I've just got the free google speaker thing and I'm trying to think where to put it in the house. The sound quality is okay but I feel kinda spoilt with my current set up.

DJ these look absolutely fantastic. That cabinet is fucking sexy too.

Once complete please send us a little video - I know it won't do the sound justice but I love seeing peoples set ups and listening areas.

+1 looks ace

The trade off between asthetics and function is tricky, especially when you get down to bass. I’ve been trying to work out how to get some treatment into my ‘cinema room’ (lounge) but the walls are screen/wallpaper/shelves/bay window so it’s basically impossible unless I start chucking soffit traps around the edge of the floor, which is going to look weird at best. I would do a ceiling cloud but that will wreck the cool Victorian coffering.

Thanks, the flexibility with speakers with the Yamaha kit is good. Think when it comes to sound quality it'll offer the best bang for buck. We had a Sonos in my old office. Lovely to use, sound quality was meh.

Have you used the musicast app much, and if so is it any good?

I could probably do a ceiling cloud without great difficulty. Knock up a frame, fill with rock wool, wrap in cloth and hang from ceiling. Would need to locate the ceiling batons.

I may also put one into the dining room as I hate it when noise reverberates and people end up shouting over each other.

Yeah all rooms are like that without stuff in them to be fair. What other gear is going in? One day I’ll have an amazing pair of floorstanders too!

Oh yeah if you’ve got equipment to cut wood accurately they’re dead easy - I bought the ones in my studio but I’ve seen plans/calcs around for the ‘right’ insulation. Mine are on brackets that stand them off the ceiling, as the air gap increases effectiveness.

I was going to mention restaurants with no treatment - nothing worse than the sound of chairs and cutlery scraping with people getting louder and louder!

A friend is a brilliant carpenter and could probably mitre some wood for an accurate frame.

Then there is still having to get “challenging” aesthetics past my partner, who may object.

Yeah - I tend to use the app more than the remote with the amp(s) to be honest. The smaller amp in the bedroom can only be used with the app for anything beyond basic controls anyway.

The musicast app allows you to change the source and the EQ without a remote, group rooms also - A feature I like means you can multiple rooms treated as one device.

I'd like to further down the line look at the individual speakers in the Yamaha line, perhaps for the garden in summer but at the moment I'd rather spend that money somewhere else.
Also if you have any audio equipment that doesn't have network functionality you can buy a module from Yamaha that'll allow you to connect it up to the network and be treated as such.

All in all I'm glad I decided on the Yamaha set up. It also helps that the network player I have in the living room has optical input so we use the same set up for films.

If the fabric colour matches the ceiling, they can be pretty subtle (or you could light the gap with neon leds for a somewhat different feel)!

I always fancied having a go at replicating the acoustic clouds in this concert hall (on a smaller scale obviously!)
Aula Magna of the University of Caracas

Thanks, sounds like a good choice. Need to find some discreet speakers for the kitchen. I'm not quite sold on ceiling speakers.....

How about 2 of those yamaha ones and run them in stereo? They don't seem too big and can always be wall mounted. They also sound fantastic.

The alternative is running a smaller amp - wxc50 or the like and put the speakers of your choice on top of the cabinets?