Continuing the journey in our search for a new home for us and Audio Federation in the general Sillycon Valley area 🙂

[The Animals are so under-rated. Though the song is about S.F. we are not looking in S.F. Well. We *looked*. The prices are actually more reasonable there than in Palo Alto, much of Menlo and Mountain View, Woodside, etc.(!) but too cold. Too cloudy. Too different of a lifestyle for the laid back people that we have been].

Small, Mid-Peninsula, south-facing

Close to trails. Yes!

Rectangular rooms? Yes!

Enough rooms? Yes!

Large enough…? Well…..

We liked this place. But really small. Large two car garage helps. But…

A little windy and hilly getting here. Hills like this would never work in Colorado – in the winter, even with 4-wheel drive and snows [snow tires], there would be a pile of cars at the bottom of every one these kinds of streets.

But maybe people here who would like to visit us are comfortable with this? Without Google Maps, how did people find ANYTHING?

Anyway, this room is 14 feet 3 inches deep. So figure the speakers are 1 foot from the front wall / windows. The Acapella speakers are about 18 inches to 30 inches deep.

We would put the listening couch up against the opposite wall. Figure that puts our ears about, what? About 9 to 11 feet from the front of the speaker? Not completely horrible.

This is definitely the best room in the house. There was not another room that had corners w/o some kind of built-in shelves or other issue for the Audio Note system. And those rooms also had compromised views / privacy.

But… the rent was reasonable [ha ha. Reasonable Rent. Such an oxymoron here. But we live in the high-end audio world right? We are used to THAT particular oxymoron 🙂 ].

I mean, what if we go crazy and get the Acapella Poseidon while we are living here? No, they are NOT ‘really nice headphones’, Neli. 😉

This place is on the list of ‘probably not’. But it is on the top of the list. [this was written several days ago. The place is still near the top of the list. It backs to open space and just has a nice feel, for all of its practical faults].

Continuing our search for a new location for our home and the store; moving from Boulder, CO to the general Silicon Valley area…

South Bay-ish 

Another larger home, looking out over San Jose-ish [hence the above song… :-)], which means expensive, but but not as expensive as it would some other places on the Peninsula!

You know, there is this short wall versus long wall blues that strike us when looking at these homes…

It looks better to have the speakers along the long wall when there is a window like this. And in fact this setup will probably sound better [because there will be almost no wall reflections of the sound from the left and right walls]. But the width [in the case depth] is so narrow that the listening chair / couch would be up against the opposing wall. And even then, position the listening chairs at the point farthest from the speakers, it would be mostly nearfield listening All Of The Time. In this giant of a room, even.

So we go through calculations and measurements. How nearfield is TOO nearfield? 8 feet? 10 feet? more?

Horns are a little different than regular box speakers with cone drivers. They take maybe 20%? more distance to ‘gel’ the sound.

But then again, we just listened to these exact speakers at Newport with the sweet spot chair about 6 feet from the front of the speakers.

However, it would be nice to not HAVE to listen to the system nearfield ALL of the time. Right?

And as big as this house was, there was really only one room for one system. And the master bath was tiny. Just sayin’ 🙂

So, gonna keep looking…

[Yes. Another southern CA song… Going to run out of videos before we find a place…]

Continuing our search for the new location for our home / store… in the general Silicon Valley area.

[Yes. This song is about L.A. but same state, right? Tried to find a good Jefferson Airplane version of this The Mamas & The Papas song. But nada. But this is a nice rendition].

In many ways it would be great if the house would have rooms that are about average. Average size, rectangular, real corners, tall but not too tall, etc. This so people can come and hear something and be sure that it will sound the same in *their* home.

But so many audiophile homes do not have ‘average’ rooms – there is a hallway to the side of one of the speakers, or one side of the room opens into a dining room or something. The roof is slanted as the listening room is just one area in a home with a cathedral ceiling. Often there may be a fireplace with a large hearth between the speakers. And on and on, an audiophile’s travail. [These ALL were the case with our main listening room in Boulder. So it was ‘average’ if not for the 24 foot ceiling and octagonal walls.

But, one can [should] *try* to get the ‘perfect room’ [without building one] when one moves. Right? Right???

Which is what we are doing here… with some degree of frustration we must admit.

Upper Peninsula

This is the living room – a little narrow but in other ways the perfect room for us. Long-ish, Reasonably tall. Rectangular. With a window with a view at one end. Both Audio Note and Acapella speakers would work here.

This is the larger, family room in this house.

Awesome, awesome views. Big rooms. Most are rectangular. A nice big garage for all the crates.

Really perfect.

But…

E-x-p-e-n-s-i-v-e [whew! knew that, right? :-)]

Plus, it is in one of the colder areas of the Peninsula – and Neli is sensitive to the cold.

And… The neighborhood was off-putting – getting glared at by the neighbors. [So many people fear change, leading to anger … but not so many of them here in Silicon Valley]. Pretty good security, I guess, but Life is too short.

So moving on…

We would love to find a listening room big enough for the large Acapella Apollon speakers [or even larger Poseidon speakers :-)]. I mean, if one is going to try and find a place that will host several audio systems, why not be a little ambitious [crazy]? 🙂