A small room setup for a sailor's tunes.
It was always a dream to have a room to myself and my music. I've had my system in my living room for quite a few years. But my love for gear, meant I quickly ran out of real estate. Luckily rearranging the house, landed me a small room to indulge myself in :)
The system as it stands today, was slowly acquired over 10 years by accumulating my hard earned savings, with what I would consider a good measure of financial discipline.
But my biggest joy is the room. What started as a white, hard tiled, barely furnished, echoey and boomy room. Has transformed into a very well behaved acoustic environment with my DIY treatments. I lugged 550 kgs of Geowool up the stairs, built wooden frames to house it, and covered it with matching acoustically transparent fabric. The end goal was to achieve a personal space that was both pleasing to the eyes as well as the ears. To this end, I lined the borders of the bass traps with wooden frames wrapped in gold. And added a few accents in gold, to mask the bass traps as much as i could. I painted the room myself, to maintain a dark blue and Turquoise color theme, to mimic the only two colors i ever see at sea :D
Acoustic measurements show a RT60 decay time of under 400 ms in the bass below 200 hz, and close to 280 ms in the frequency range upwards of 200 hz. The cleaning up of the excessive bass energy, which was drowning everything else before, has resulted in a huge improvement in clarity and imaging. I do not claim to know anything about the dark art of acoustics. So Iam pleased that what started as a DIY experiment with a lot of reading, intent and hardwork has paid off sonically in the end.
So to sum it up. Iam happy with how things have panned out. And i now get to spend my vacations, sipping my favourite brew, immersed in music in a small nook to myself. Cant ask for a better refuge after a long and hardy sail.