Two-channel listening room · Kansas City.

The room comes first

Below a certain frequency, the room is the instrument. Sound bounces between parallel walls and builds up at some pitches and cancels at others, so one bass note booms and the next nearly disappears, and where you sit decides which. No speaker escapes this. The room’s shape decides how bad it is, and that is the first thing we look at.

• Dimensions. We measure the room and note where its walls, openings and ceiling are. A room whose length, width and height are close to equal, or simple multiples of one another, stacks its bass problems at the same pitches. A room with an opening to a hallway or a stair behaves differently from a closed one. None of this rules a room out; it tells us where the speakers and the seat should go and what the treatment has to do.
• Treatment. Three jobs, in order. Bass control, usually in the corners, where low frequencies gather. Absorption at the first reflection points on the side walls and ceiling, so the sound from the speakers reaches you before its echo does and the stereo image stays sharp. And diffusion or soft furnishing behind the listening seat, so the room does not sound dead. A room needs enough treatment to be clear, not so much that it sounds like a closet. Our acoustic treatment page covers the materials.
• Power. A dedicated circuit for the audio equipment keeps it away from the refrigerator, the furnace and the dimmers on the same line. Amplifiers also make heat, and the equipment needs somewhere to sit with air around it. On a new build, both are cheap to plan. In a finished room, the site walk tells us what the electrician has to do.
• Noise and light. A quiet room lets you hear more at lower volume, so we look at HVAC noise, windows facing a street, and doors that do not close. Lighting on a dimmer or a scene completes it, because most people listen better in a darker room.

Speaker placement

A two-channel room is set up for one seat. The speakers and that seat usually form a triangle, the speakers sit symmetrically in the room so both channels hear the same walls, and they come out from the wall behind them so the bass is even and the image has depth. The distances are worked out in your room, not copied from a chart, because every room’s bass behaves differently.

Then we listen and adjust. Small moves forward, back and in angle change the bass at the seat and the focus of the center image more than most people expect. We mark the final position, so a speaker moved for cleaning goes back exactly where it belongs. Where a subwoofer is used, it is placed and set to blend with the pair rather than stand out from it.

Source and amplification

The equipment is chosen for the room and for how you listen. A large room and a pair of demanding speakers want more power than a small study does. Someone who listens mostly to vinyl needs a different front end from someone who streams. And some people want the equipment on view as part of the room, while others want it in a cabinet.

• Speakers. We are an authorized dealer for Bowers & Wilkins, Focal and Magico. We also carry and install Sonus faber and KEF. Which pair suits a room depends on its size, the placement it allows and what you listen to.
• Amplification. We are an authorized dealer for Classé, NAD and Marantz. We also carry and install McIntosh, whose two-channel range includes both solid-state and vacuum-tube amplifiers. An integrated amplifier keeps things simple; a separate preamplifier and power amplifier give more room to grow.
• Vinyl. We carry and install Rega and Pro-Ject turntables, cartridges and phono stages. A turntable wants a solid, level surface away from the speakers and from footfall, and the cartridge is set up on site.
• Bass support. Where the room or the speakers call for it, we carry and install REL Acoustics subwoofers, set to blend with the pair.
• Streaming. A streamer or a network-connected amplifier brings your services in, on a wired connection where we can run one. The network matters more than people think; a listening room on a weak Wi-Fi link drops out at the worst moment.

How it differs from a home theater

A home theater is built around a screen, many channels, a processor and a row of seats that all need to hear the film well. A listening room is built around two speakers and one seat, and it is judged on music alone. The treatment aims at a clear stereo image rather than an enveloping surround field. The speakers are placed for one position, not for a row. The electronics are two channels, often on view, rather than a processor and a stack of amplifiers in a rack.

The two can share a room. Some owners want the front pair of a theater to double as a serious stereo system, and that can work when the front speakers and the room are chosen with both uses in mind. It is a design decision to make at the start, not a setting to find later.

Living with it

A listening room should be easy to use on an ordinary evening. One button on a keypad or in the app can dim the lights, turn the system on and select the source, and the same room can join the whole-house audio when you want music elsewhere. Nobody needs to learn the equipment to enjoy it.

We leave the placement marked and the settings written down, so a speaker moved for cleaning or a cable pulled by accident goes back the way it was. Every install carries our five-year workmanship warranty, and the equipment carries its own manufacturer warranty. If you change the room later, a new rug, a new sofa or a bookshelf, call us; a small change in the room can be worth a small change in placement.

Further reading

Where to go next if this article gave you the framework but you want the brand- or install-specific depth.

• Whole-home audio, explainedHow the listening room fits with music in the rest of the house, and what a whole-home system adds.→
• Invisible vs in-ceiling speakersFor the rooms that are not the listening room: what each kind of hidden speaker gives up and gains.→
• Planning a theater roomIf the room might also be a theater, the decisions that have to be made before the framing closes.→

Start with the room

We look at the room before we talk about speakers.

Plan a site walk (913) 804-7575