skushino wrote:

… when I opened up the volume, the piano clearly resonates with the playback.

Jorge wrote:

Having listened to your system I am very interested in a comparison between live music and something similar (quartet) sounding in your playback, on the same room,  you state that live was "too high resolution" and that for playback you needed a more "dead" room.  Can you give us a more detailed descrption? A close friend recorded in his room a jazz singer with electric guitar on RTR and then played it back,  there was not a huge difference!  Full horn system did help! Old WE cinema systems were often used against live orchestras playing in the cinema.... Would have loved to listen to that!

Ok, it took my listening room 2 years to be fully functioning and I have decided to take it a notch further. Next week I will be breaking one of the wall in my listening room and if the roof will not collapse as the result then I will have beautiful space to host a piano in my listening room.  It will be a large 10 feet bay so it will accommodate even 9 feet grand piano but for now it 5 feet baby grand will go in there. It for sure will have some toll over the acoustic in the room and some of the things will be revised.  The “organ” acoustic treatment over the midbass horns will be most probably partially gone. The wall between the bay with record and bad on the left:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Site_Images/NewRoom_ASC_1.JPG

 …. will be gone and piano will be injected in there. The record will have a new location and many other changes will be performed. The Macondo, Miq’s the equipment and the room stays.

It is interesting development going on in my listening room. Amy the Kitten is making her hands dirty to convert our man-cave nerdy house into something that we as a family would enjoy. With all horror that this move would inflict in the heart of a heavy-core audio person I have to admit that I do like so far what she is doing. One of the walls in the listening room is broken and her baby grand, her music and her cute viola are placed in the space. It made room even larger than before. I still work on acoustic treatment of the new space and I will post the picture what I feel I am gone.

With time goes by we have a number of other projects how we could modify the appearance of the listening room. It might sound sacrilegious but Amy has beautiful taste and capacity in decoration field, she is sensible and recognizes arguments (it I subdue her unfortunate decoration spontaneousness) and she is respectful in term of reasons – a seldom quality for a woman.

Some far the only change she inflicted to our listening room was creation the space for her musical instruments in the room and change my listening chair to a listening couch.  The last one was not negotiable for her. I enjoy it but when I explain to her about time alignment and necessity to sit in specific manner she disobey and keep posturing herself within the couch like a monkey on a tree. I work on that part of her listening habits, not too successfully so far.

We have a plan to remove wall-to-wall carpet from listening room and to put there parquet with mandatory Oriental rug. I have no problem with it and I even like it but I need to formalize this project in context of the playback to live on hard surface – it will be many changed that I need to force. The most attractive from audio perspective is that I will be able to drive Macondo across the room on some kind of good rolls in my search of DPoLF.

The most interesting change however is not what I said above but what is coming next. Amy has some kind of girlish obsession with plants. She sticks them into all imaginable places and the next target of her attention is Macondo. She asked me if I would like to decorate Macondo with some plants.  With all ridiculousness of this proposal I have to admit that I like the idea a lot.  A few years back I was visiting an installation in Manhattan. The guy was a full Goto setup that was located in the main room but it was very tactfully almost hidden in a “jungle” of very cleverly positioned plans. The speakers and amplifiers were almost invisible and the music was sound like it come from a forest. I am sure that it would not be possible in my situation but I very open to experiment with it and to see where it might go.

JJ Triode wrote:

I predict in the long run you will have better Sound with a hardwood floor.  Of course it will require some adjustments but that was my experience when I made this change years ago.  Much easier for cleaning etc. too.   Rather than say any more in detail let's wait to see what you find.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I can’t predict what sound will I get with hardwood floors and how it will be different from think wall-to-wall carpet that I have now. Currently I have architect wood joists 30 feet long running at the bottom of the floor. Then I have a sheet of 1.25” plywood board, than 1/4 sheet of foiled plywood, than then 1” plywood. Atop I have carpet with regular pads under it. If I lay the typical contemporary American parquet then it will be stable to the top layer of plywood, not glued as they use to do 30 years back. So, the floor will not be more solid and it is will then very little stronger.  I am sure it will be another layer of rugs atop of parquet and my idea is that with reflection/abortion of the rag I will be able to moderate the “live top” vs. “live bottom” acoustics in the room. As now I can’t do anything at the bottom as it is dead die to the heavy absorption from my wall-to-wall carpet. It migh be interesting to play with “bottom liveliness” if I have a chance….

decoud wrote:

Sugatsune make these integrated devices that could work well: I have used their kit before. http://www.sugatsune.com/products/ProductDetails.cfm?CATID=12&SUBCATID=2&PRODUCTID=AF-50%2F65  But unless the contact points are very broad you will have issues with marking the floor, except if you make it out of brown ebony or something comparably hard.