Reference System

Below is a scale drawing, followed by a comprehensive description, of my reference listening space.
It was impractical to show the entire forty-six-foot length, so…

 

In November 2015, with the kids grown and gone, we downsized from our large five-bedroom, three-floor home to a cozy three-bedroom ranch-style house with a full basement on two acres in northwest Goshen, Indiana.

My new music room occupies the north end of the west half of the home’s full basement: a long, generous space measuring forty-six feet deep, thirteen feet wide, and seven feet, four inches tall. This large volume alone gives the room real acoustic breathing room, well beyond what a typical listening space offers. More on this soon.

Adding to its advantage, the room connects to an equally sized adjoining space through two cased openings, different in size and asymmetrically placed along the wall: the first, forty inches wide by seventy-eight inches tall, begins eleven feet ten inches from the front wall; the second, thirty-four inches wide by seventy-seven inches tall, begins twenty-eight feet from the front wall. Because these two openings differ in both size and position, they function as natural aperiodic vents, relieving excess acoustical loading and helping the room stay clean and well-behaved across the entire frequency spectrum. At the south end of this space, near the downstairs fireplace, I have also set up a small theater.

Some quick math puts the room at roughly 600 square feet, or about 4,300 cubic feet, a volume large enough to support full-frequency wavelengths down to 24Hz! Better still, it produces only two primary axial resonances, at roughly 44Hz and 78Hz, resulting in remarkably little bass loading for a room this size.

The proof came during a visit to install and set up my Von Schweikert Audio ULTRA.9 Foundation loudspeakers, when Leif Swanson, the company’s Chief Designer, remarked, “You seem to have some pretty cool things taking place with the room. Good length for the bass waves and those doorways. I notice very little change to the bass walking around the room. You definitely scored with this room.”

I began programming in 1970 as a high school sophomore and retired in November 2021 as an IT Engineer/Analyst certified on both Microsoft and Apple platforms, so building my own Windows-based PC as a file server/streamer was a natural extension of that background. I started with a Lenovo ThinkStation P320 CAD workstation: an Intel Xeon 3.50 GHz quad-core CPU running 8 logical processors, 32 GB of RAM, and a Samsung EVO Plus solid-state drive for the OS.

The system is further optimized for music playback with the current version of Fidelizer (https://www.fidelizer-audio.com/), a utility that manages and prioritizes the computer’s core functions, services, and processes. Roon serves as my primary streaming and music management software, supplemented by JRiver MediaCenter. Files travel from the media server to my LampizatOr Baltic 4 DAC via the Kubala Sosna Research Ovation USB cable; given how most DACs handle DSD files, I’ve found USB to be the most effective connection overall.

Locally stored files are served from my Buffalo LS220D 12TB Network Attached Storage system using a Dejitter IT Systems Switch X, WiFi X, and all Audience Hidden Treasure Ethernet CAT7 cable. I have also installed the Hidden Treasure SATA cables inside the Workstation. The results are extremely effective.

The tweeters of my Von Schweikert Audio ULTRA .9’s are centered one foot, ten inches from the sidewalls, and just over seven feet from the wall behind them, and the enclosures are toed in by about eight degrees. The prime listening area is centered roughly eight feet back from the plane of the tweeters, or some fifteen feet from the front wall. This placement puts the back of the markedly deep enclosures, and their unique-to-the-industry, room-integrating rear-firing Ambience Retrieval System, four feet, ten inches away from the front wall.

The ULTRA.9s, at just over five hundred pounds each, have a sensitivity of 92dB @ 1W/1M, a remarkably stable 4-ohm nominal impedance, and provide an incredible in-room frequency response of 16Hz-40KHz! With their internal 800-watt mono Foundation amplifier and the fully integrated suite of controls for their rear-mounted fifteen-inch subwoofer (you can manage its gain, crossover frequency, low-frequency slope (q) adjustment, and fully variable phase, from 0 to 180 degrees), combined with my Audionet Max monoblocks’ output of 700 watts into 4 ohms, gives me some 3000 watts of power. Not only does this mean that my system will likely never run short of current or clip, but it means that I can measure my system’s output in horsepower! Since 745.7 watts equal 1 horsepower, I have just a tad over 4 horsepower!

In addition to the native positive attributes of my listening room mentioned above (dimensions and aperiodic venting), further room taming is achieved with the use of Michael Green’s RoomTunes Corner Tunes, two Echo Tunes (one each at the tweeter’s primary reflection points on the ceiling), and the remarkably effective and affordable ATS Acoustics Corner Bass Traps in each corner behind the speakers. Two 6-foot-tall by 4-foot-wide panels of Auralex Studiofoam Wedgies provide absorption (and a bit of diffraction as well) at both the first and second side-wall reflection points for the speakers.

Power to components in the listening room is fully dedicated, with a separate 20-Amp service run from the house’s service panel for the amplifiers (main audio and subs), and another separate 15-Amp service run for the sources and other electronics, using 20A Hubbell Hospital Grade receptacles. All other devices on that level of my home (computers, lights, printers, televisions, heating/AC, etc.) are on separate, isolated circuits.

At the time the new services were run, I also had the whole-home grounding system redone, including the installation of new grounding rods, to both comply with the current National Electrical Code standards of achieving a resistance of 25 ohms or less, and to not introduce any unnecessary noise into the power delivery system. This was done to provide the highest degree of sonic accuracy possible, ensuring the blackest of backgrounds, improving the pace, rhythm, and timing, and painting a wider, deeper, and taller soundstage, including better separation of vocals and instruments.

Those who know me (or have read my work over the years) know that my system MUST be tonally accurate, strikingly neutral, stunningly transparent, and jubilantly musical. However, open, detailed, and layered soundstaging, combined with realistically sized and spatially accurate images, are every bit as important to me as truthful timbre and musical bloom. With the right recording, this system whisks you back to the venue or hall of the original performance for a spooky-real recreation of that event in the here and now.

I have had many audiophile and musician visitors remark on the power of the listening experience as witnessed from my chair. Musicians from any number of genres of music, from Salsa to Rock ‘n’ Roll to Classical, have actually wept after or during a listening session, and audiophiles of many years have remarked things like, “What more could you ask for?” or “This is as good as I have ever heard.”

While those are encouraging words, and seem to indicate that I’m doing the right things with component and cable selection as well as room setup, my system (every system? ) must be seen as an ongoing work in progress. Every once in a while, the addition of some new piece, be it a source, a cable, or an accessory, allows me to move just a little closer to that actual musical event. The journey continues….

Care to do some time traveling? Here is a link to many earlier systems