Great topic. My wife and I are starting our major remodeling project. By the time we finished, my neighbors will not be able to recognize the old house (typical ranch style home here in the Silicon Valley). We will be adding a dedicated listening room as well, from the ground up. So the sky (and, of course, the wallet) is the limit. Both the architect and I came out of fairly progressive design schools, so the design of the house will be kind of out there, at least in comparison to the fairly conservative American standard.
I've started envisioning what the listening room might look like, and contemplated about enlisting Rives Audio to assist in the design. Afer looking at examples on their websites, I'm leaning towards figuring out the design myself while using Rives Audio to provide advice on acoustics. Not that there's anything wrong with their designs, but you could tell they were designed by engineers. I've started rading a few books on acoustics to learn the basics of acoustics so I have some concepts of what to avoid. I'm also doing some researches on designs of concert halls to get some design ideas as well. So, we'll see how this project turn out in late fall 2009.
FrankC
