Room Dimensions are 15x17x7.5 with a concrete floor. A room was constructed within an existing room to eliminated music and sound for escaping. Sound deadening materials and 5/8th inch dry were used. One can listen to music or watch movies at any time of day or night and not disturb other household members or neighbors. The overall construction of just the room, treatments and rack took approximately 10 months of weekends and evenings. Different types and locations of room treatments were added over time. The room is wired with four dedicated 20-amp circuits with the projector totally hidden in the canister lighting soffit.
The 2-channel system is self-contained with the HT processor running through the tape loop of the Rowland pre. The REL sub is used for both 2-channel music and 5.1 movie soundtracks.
I'm a strong believer in Treating your room. Many say and I believe that the room is the single most important part of a sound system. All walls including ceiling is treated with acoustic panels as well as with room lenses.
Rowland Monoblocks recently added. Incredible improvement over my previous amp. Improvements in detail, silky smoothness with incredible power reserves. I'm pretty much done for now.
JM Labs Micro Utopia Be with Utopia stands replace Thiel CS22's.
My first sub was a Velodyne and it did not integrate well with my Thiels. I went without a sub for three years until aquiring the REL. I've had my Stadium for four years.
My only other consideration at the time was which REL to get two Storms or one Stadium III. I think I will have my sub for quite some time, maybe someday aquiring a second one. If you like to buy new, I'd at least look into the Utopia sub. The current REL's are manufactured in a differnce factory than the old ST series.
Dizzyizzid, Yes, after playing around with placement and adjustments for about a month, I finally got it dialed in. I haven't made any change in settings in over a month. Initially, I was assuming that because of the size of the Micro Utopia's compared to my Thiel floor standers the cross over or roll over point would be at a much higher setting. After it's all said and done, I've got things set at the A-2 setting exactly were I had things set with my Thiel's.
If I would have just listened to my ears instead of making assumptions, I probably would have got it right in a day or two. Those Utopia's have very surprisingly good bass by themselves.
System edited: Digital music server added replacing SACD player/transport. Result is better sound quality with convenience and Internet radio. The Roku device also gives me remote volume control and a beautiful readout of music titles, artists, etc. Best audio investment I've ever made....
System edited: After months of contemplating between Dynaudio and JM Labs 2-way monitors, decided to to go all out with the Micro Utopia Be's with matching stands.
Thanks for the feedback on sub location. I have tried various locations including corner loading and have prefered my current location. All seem to work well but will all the adjustments on the sub, having the sub sit between my main speakers fits my room the best. I've got the crossover setting at 22hz which is the Stadiums lowest setting. I'm extemely satisfied with its output. I use my system 95% of the time for 2-channel music. With concrete floors, do you really feel that removing the spikes would benefit? What main speakers do you have your system and where is your crossover setting?
System edited: An outboard Audio Mirror DAC was added to significantly improving my digital. Currently using the Marantz SA14 SACD player at a transport. Its amazing what a $500 non oversampling DAC can do. StraightWire info-link digital cable and Crescendo interconnects added and Im sure added to the digital enjoyment. To round things out, I've added vinyl playback and dug my LP's out of the garage. I had a lot of fun building the plinth to enhance Lencos playback following the monster Lenco thread here on Audiogon. TWL tonearm modification brought things to another level for just a few dollars. Highly recommended.
When I first placed the room lenses in my room, I did not feel that they made much of an improvement. After leaving them in for a month, I removed them resulting in a noticable difference. I've found that if I position the front two half way between the speakers and the side wall 45 degrees off the speakers corners, I get the best results. Moving the lenses just a couple of inches makes a difference in imaging and detail. The closer to the speaker, a bit more detail and more pin point imaging. Pulling the lenses away from the speakers, the sound stage opens up with the presentation a bit more layed back. These differnces are suttle but after your get your system dialed in with speaker placement and seating, you will definitely notice a difference. Because of my projection screen, I used two more lenses instead of the more conventional one between your speakers. Moving the rear lenses towards the rear of the speakers resulted the same as the front lenses for me but to a lesser degree.
Here is the link to a site that will give you step by step instuctions. If you decided to make a set and have trouble finding materials or need more specifics, let me know.
The rear wall diffusers made my room sound bigger. I found that after installation of the diffusers, I had to increase the output on my sub in order to get the same bass response. Prior to the diffusers, during big band or orchestras, my room at times sounded congested when listening at higher volume levels. I believe that I cannot make a 17 foot room sound any bigger and at the time seem to be happy.
When I finally finished construction on the room, I did not have any treatments. My speakers and electronics were unchanged minus the sub. The room sounded like an echo chamber, much worse than in the den were my system resided in the past. The first thing that I did was to construct four room lenses using the recipe by John Rische. Upon completion, it took a few days to finally find out were to place them. To this day, I still find myself moving them around an inch or two. They almost work as tone controls allowing you to tailor your sound. The lenses completely solved the echoing problems with up to moderate listening levels. I was happy with this scenario for a few months until I got the upgrade itch.
I added the two side and rear corner panels, also designed by John Rische. This resulted in a large improvement at higher listening levels. The music no longer sound congested at any level but I seemed to loose a bit of bass response. This gave me an excuse to purchase a sub that I needed anyway for home theater.
After installation and break-in of the sub, I realized that I would need some more panels to help absorb unwanted boomy bass. I added the three rear panels and ceiling panels. I was now able to open up the sub and enjoy an incredibly tight sub-terrain low end that totally changed the way my Thiels sounded. All of a sudden, the music got warmer with an increased soundstage.
Another six months go by and I got the bug to make another improvement. If my room had a weakness, it was that especially with big bands or orchestras at higher volume levels, the music sounded as if were in a room. In other words, I it still sounded a bit congested. By adding the diffusers to the rear wall, any hint of congestion has disappeared.
The addition of the binds covering my screen really did not change much. This is probably because my mains are four feet from the back wall anyway.
Well, that’s about it. All I need now is to upgrade my 2-channel amp and get some better seating. I’m sure after those issues are taken care of, I’ll think of something else to upgrade. Hope this helps.
System edited: The room was constructed in an existing storage room that is attached to the house. The room housed a furnace and well pump with still resides in the area behind the doors. The wood stove sits physically between them separated by sheet-rock and some tile. The floor is concrete and was covered with some high quality pad and nice Berber carpet. All construction was done single-handedly. My wife did assisting in holding sheet-rock panels and final painting. I did have a contractor tape and mud which ran about $1700.00. Total cost of materials was a little over $5,000.00. The cost of the rack was about 100 bucks and all other room treatments ran about another couple hundred. Pretty much everything was purchased at Home Depot. With the exception of the one wall hanging (Sigman), couch, blinds and equipment, everything in the room was DIY. The vertical blinds did make a difference. That was the last thing added to the room. The difference in sound was not as significant as the side panels, the rear diffusors or room lenses. The blinds were added for both decorative purpose as well as sound improvement. They did seem to warm up the overall presentation a bit. I think the reason why a more significant change did not occur was because my speakers were already 48 away from the rear wall. My equipment rack was constructed out of one inch and three-quarter inch MDF, three-quarter inch all-thread and associated nuts, bolts, and washers, PVC pipe and most important bicycle inner tubes. The basic construction of the rack is very common with the exception of using one inch as opposed to three-quarter MDF. The one-inch boards are the base shelves and the all-threads hold and separate the shelves. I used PVC pipe sprayed black to cover the all-threads. I used a router to cut out an area to house the inner tubes and used a sheet of three-quarter MDF to act as a base for the components. Each component has a inner tube and an addition MDF base beneath it. Ive found that the inner tubes should be inflated with just enough air to give it sharp plus another 20% more air.
Screen size is 100" diagonal with a Luxus bezel. The black bezel is a black velvet called VeLux which is extreme important to conpensate for overscanning.
Although a turntable is the ultimate source in regards to sound quality, I feel the cost for one that I'd be happy with is not worth the return and again to have to go through cleaning, cartridge replacement, etc, would add to my audiophile crazyness. The way I look at it is I can buy a lot of CD's for what a nice turntable and record cleaning machine would cost. I'm sure if I demoed one and had a setup actually in my room, my feelings may be different but what you don't know won't hurt you.
