The Room, The Room, Boss
[Fantasy Island….]
OK, we like the custom room design folks that we have met, and they seem to be doing a thriving business, and there is nothing wrong with that….
But I feel so OFTEN like putting up an ad right next to some of the dealer et. al. ads I see that have photos of their rooms whose appearance makes them come seemingly from ‘the outer world’ [Dune, the movie]
“New High End Audio System!
* Brand new technology, works in any room of your existing home!
* No need for for remodeling, hammering, dust, construction workers, their dogs and cigarettes and trash!
* No “long stream of cost overruns” heartburn.
* No agonizing choices between Brown1, Brown2 and Brown3
* No ackward moments of senility revealed when you have to pay extra to have the bluegreen painted over that looked so good last week.
* No choices between painting over the gray that was painted over the bluegreen and Prozac in order to avoid the depression the gray is inflicting.
* No disturbingly unhealthy choices between having windows and just having a peephole.
* No need to sink your money into something that you will have to leave behind when you move.
* No need to spend Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars on something for your house that for the average buyer will actually lower its resale value!
Save some money and buy instead your dream system, and spend the rest on your significant other. Might we suggest the Marten Coltrane Supremes and Audio Note M10 pre and Lamm ML2.1 amps and Emm Labs digital and HRS MXR rack and….?”
Let’s see, if we run that in Stereophile and the Absolute Sound….what do you think the response will be? 🙂 🙂
Anyway, the dedicated custom-designed room hype is here and quite strong and I am sure this will rankle some folks – as going against the prevaling winds as the experts have mapped them always does, no matter what the industry.
Sometimes, it seems like we are ‘going nowhere awfully fast’. [Scotty, Star Trek]
Well, to the list of things people don’t want or need to enjoy music, I’d have to add room treatments, exotic power cords and speakers out in the middle of the room. Of course, I’m biased. Audio Note speakers are designed to be placed in corners, giving you a big chunk of your room back, making POSLQ’s very happy in the process. Exotic power cords do *change* the sound of AN electronics, but of the many people I’ve met who go through all kinds of excursions with these things, all have returned to garden variety cords. (I have heard other electronics that seemed to benefit from exotic power cords, but not ours . . .) Peter Q’s stock answer to the question “How should I treat my listening room?” is, “Line the walls, floor to ceiling, all the way ’round, with wooden boxes full of LPs. That’s what I do. Sounds very nice.”
Going to the London Sound ‘n Vision Show at the Park Inn at Heathrow today, then home. See you guys in a month at RMAF!
Hi Dave,
Hope you took pictures of Milan…? I meant the show, but I guess pictures of the city might be nice too 🙂
“Line the walls, floor to ceiling, all the way ’round, with wooden boxes full of LPs”
Hmmm… wonder how much that would cost.
Say a room that is 14 feet by 20 feet by 8 feet tall – a good, but not too outrageously sized room. That is 4480 square feet to line the two long walls. At about 100? LPs per square foot – ignoring the width of the shelving, that is
44,800 LPs
That is a lot of music. at about $3 / LP (I think thisis probably an average, large-lot price) that is about $132,000.
Yep, cheaper than remodeling your listening room for many people (us 🙁 ).
And, uh, more musical too 🙂
And inspriing to look at.
I Don’t THINK I made any miscalculations….I should go see how much space 100 LPs does take up…..
Take care, Dave,
Mike.