Description

I just finished building a dedicated listening room in my new apartment. It took me one year and a half to complete, but it was well worth the wait. I simply love it.

The room size is 14 x 19 x 8 feet.

The room was designed by a company that specialises in acoustic design. Not the popular Rives Audio, since I live in Europe and that would increase the costs of the Level 3 project well past $10k mark, but a reputable local company.

The room acoustics was was first designed in a digital domain and then improved upon with the real world measurements taken during all stages of construction work.

The room is soundproof and - among other things - features soundproof windows, double doors and 11" thick double walls. The measured noise level inside the room is 26dB during the day (measured during rush hours, at 16:00), so it is almost dead quiet.

The room has two dedicated lines, each rated 20A @ 230V, one for analog and one for digital gear. All cables, circuit breakers and mains outlets are of audiophile quality.

I have also added an ultra quiet (22dB) A/C.
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Components Toggle details

    • MSB DAC IV Signature Plus
    MSB DAC IV Signature with Diamond Power Base - replaced the dCS Scarlatti, which served me as my reference for the past 3 yaers.
    • MSB S200
    Fully balanced 200 Watt stereo amplifier. Class A, Zero Negative Feedback design. Fluid, palpable, a bit on the warm side of things. An amazing piece.
    • Magico S5
    New addition to the system. Replaced Wilson Sasha speakers.
    • MUSA S21T USB
    Computer based transport with SOtM PCIe USB card, SOtM sata filter, fanless PSU, fanless i5 CPU, SSD, 8GB RAM and Synology 2x2TB NAS. Running Win 7/64 with Jriver and Jplay.
    • AudioQuest WEL Signature
    Replaced Tara Labs The RS-1 interconnects.
    • AudioQuest Diamond USB
    USB cable.
    • Shunyata Anaconda Z-Tron
    A new model from Shunyata. Replaced van den Tara Labs RS-1 cable.
    • Shunyata Anaconda CX
    I have two of those, powering Dart and dCS.
    • Pure Power 2000
    Battery powered AC Regenerator.
    • Finite Elemente Pagode Master Reference HD09
    Top of the range component stand from Finite Elemente, with their resonator technology (3 used). I favour those over a 4-tier Pagode rack, since they do not interfere with soundstage when placed between the speakers.
    • Finite Elemente Ceraballs
    I have two sets placed under my speaker cables. Very unussual location, I agree, but works a treat.
    • Finite Elemente Cerapuc
    I have two sets placed under my speakers. A simply stunning improvement in low-level detail retrival and microdynamics. Worth every penny !
    • HMS Energia SSDB mains outlets
    Two of those finish off my two, 230V/20A, dedicated power lines.
    • AHP Klangmodul 3+
    Audiophile circuit breakers. Gold plated, solid copper contacts. Each of the two dedicated power lines has his own breaker.
    • ACS Diffusors
    Diffusors made by german company Acoustic Control Systems. I have 3 sets of those, one on the rear wall and two on the side walls. As you can see on the pic, the whole part of the rear wall, to which the diffusor is attached, pertrudes 12" into the room.
    • Custom absorbers
    The whole room is fitted with custom absorbers, tuned to specific frequencies. The pic shows one of the six absorbers fitted to the front wall. If you look carefully, you wil notice, that there is an MDF plate with lots of small holes fitted inside, which divides the internal volume of the absorber into two smaller chambers. The sound enters the traps by the front gaps, goes to the first empty chamber and then through the holes to the next chamber, where it can dissipate in a mineral fiber (not fitted on this pic).
    • Custom diffusors
    Set of 5 custom diffusors fitted over the listener's head.
    • RT-60 curve
    This is the RT-60 curve of my room. Black trace is our target curve, blue one is base curve (empty room, no acoustic treatment, no floor), red curve shows how the room responded after ACS diffusors, wooden floor and sand stone were added. Green curve is the most recent one. It is still not perfect, but we are working on it.
    • Room Frequency Response curve
    Room Frequency response. Quite nice if you ask me :-)
    • Daikin ultra quiet A/C unit
    Daikin A/C split system replaced McQuay unit. The difference in noise levels generated by those two units is staggering. Daikin is so quiet (22dB) that you can barely hear it from the listening chair. There are CD-players that generate more noise than this ! The other outstanding feature of this unit is that it can work when outside temp drops to 10'F - so it can be used during winter too.

Comments 310

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Elberoth2
I made a radical change and replaced Boulder pre with ARC Ref 3. It is interesting you are moving to Darts and I am moving to ARC. If you calculate the cumulative value of the all the gear entered service , you may end up with a figure quite enough open a Hi-End shop in Europe I guess.:)
regards

mert

not only me but many dcs owners says same thing. DCS has received many customer complaints about transport problems in past. That's way they are using only esoteric tranport mechanisms. Plus music with old stack was like cut into pieces: hard to follow and listen. Maybe excessive long signal path was causing this.(too many powercords, interconnects, 1394 cables.....) I had meridian 808 signiture, Accuphase DP-78, and dcs full stack for comparison. I bought puccini, a friend bought meridian 808 and got rid the all DCS gear in the end. I am selling a boulder 2010 pre here, chk my ad and picture you will see the dcs full stack next to boulder 2010.

mert

elberoth
let me answer micro's question: Yes it is better than old dcs stuck. I repeat myself again: it doesn't have the faults of old DCS stuff. If you know the dcs sound you understood what I was trying to tell you.

mert

I have now Krell Evo 402 and trying to reconfig my setup!

mert

elberoth

Do you have any information concerning Krell Evo 402 power amp? I just checked Audio magazine and found out that it scored 135 points from test. What is current trend over new evo Krell amps in Germany?

thanks in advance

mert

mert

Elberoth, congrats on the speakers. Don't hury up for cable change as you know I just got Tra. MM2 cables from the States. I will share my opinion soon.( what makes interesting is speaker cable is specially tuned for Sophia series 2.)

Regards

mert

Right speakers for your setup Elberoth. However, you HAVE to change your speaker cable as well.(at least) Would it bother you if you spend another 6000 Euro on Transparent Reference mm2? Sounds like a bad news:) This is the way has to be done as long as you deal with Wilson Audio speakers..........

mert

Elberoth2

Did you have chance to hear DP-700?

mert

Mtkhl567

you are wellcome. I agree with you but only %75 out of 100 what you said. Dp-78 has six paralel 1955 analogue devices for each channel, all together 12.(r+l)DP-77 has 8 in total(4+4) The difference is subjective. The ability of understanding the sonic difference of various gear is not given by god. Only you may improve it gear after gear, cable after cable.........maybe you need more time than regular audiophile who knows?

Regards

mert

Mtkhl567

Don't be too much self-confident about your Emm labs players. As you know best gear which bring most when you sell or trade. Yours retails 10.000 usd, consider yourself very lucky if you can sell it for 3500 euros in Belgium market. However, any Accuphase product means hot cash product here in Europe. (germany especialy, Elberoth knows better how second hand works in europe.) Sometimes sonics are nothing, but CASH is everything.(don't take personly but you will be very angry when you sell your emm gear and don't want to remember how good it used sound.....)

mert

Elberoth wellcome to Acuphase Club! As usual I am always one step ahead! I have discovered the beauty of Accuphase players in 2005. If finances allow buy dp-78 and new dc-801 converter.(use dp-78 via Hs-link)I tell you one thing about your setup: if you had my speakers plus all power conditioning and cables I currently use, you may catch sonic heaven with your Ref 110, Ref 3. Don't you agree?

mert