GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: Romy The Cat's new Listening Room

Post Subject: The ultimate music room and the sound of silence.Posted by oxric on: 5/30/2012

RonyWeissman wrote:
This is one of my favorite topics.

I completly share this sentiment.

There is clearly nothing nearly as important as the listening room itself and having the possibility of building a listening room from scratch is precisely the sort of opportunity that I have been aiming for for a number of years.

Trying to while away the time in Basel airport recently, I picked up a French magazine (Stereo Prestige & Image No. 67 Mai 2012, pg 20-26) which has a 6 page article by Jean Hiraga, which looks at an audiophile’s listening room in some detail. It is fascinating reading and it was surprising that the owner there positioned his room located in the suburbs of Tokyo 12m deep underground, and accessed by a lift..This room is supplied directly by two 30KVA transformers located on the property, drawing power from the grid. The room seems to have been made into some sort of Faraday cage and although it is not particularly large, it seems to be quite effective at what it sets out to achieve.

This particular Japanese installation appears quite extreme. The owner for example makes use of a dedicated antenna used to capture the 10MHz GPS signal from the Trimble Thunderbolt reference clock (see www.trimble.com/timing), which the owner claims gives an auditable improvement over the OCX Master Clock from Antelope Audio or the Rubidium G-0D clock from Esoteric, which superiority the owner is apparently happy to demonstrate at the flick of a switch. One can sense that the reporter, Jean Hiraga, is quite taken aback by the extreme methods resorted to by this Japanese audiophile to achieve his ‘perfect’ listening room...I strongly recommend you pick up the magazine as this article alone makes it worth the entry ticket. The rest of the system is horn loaded for the midrange and HF ( YL D-35000 II and YL D-55000 II, YL D-18000 Y) but direct radiating for LF (15” Goto SG-38WNSS). All in all the main objectives of this listening room seem to be (i) as low a noise floor as humanly possible (ii) immunity from the vagaries of the mains power supply (iii) electromagnetic isolation.

What is perfect for this audiophile would be however simply maddening for me. I would hate to be so deep underground and could not live with the restricted access using a lift. The room is also too small (35m2) to my liking although I do not doubt that it addresses most of the issues that one may have even with considerably larger rooms. I would also loathe to have my future listening room to be so far removed from the main house. In my case I am lucky in that the plot of land that I bought recently in Alsace with a view to building my PassivHaus allows me to build a listening room which is underground for the most part but above ground on the west side and so should present a view of the gentle roll of the Vosges mountains, vineyards and a lovely sunset to boot in the evening when I generally listen to music...

Best regards
Rakesh

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