Man Cave or No?

An interesting mix of responses. It seems like many folks struggle with the trade off between having a dedicated room for their rig and feeling isolated while there (from family, daylight, streetscape, whatever). Of course those of you with multiple systems, one in "the cave" and another in "the house" have the best of both worlds. Thanks to all for chiming in.

I have a dedicated listening room that next to the kitchen. My wife and I listen together quite a bit. I guess I'm lucky I don't need a "Man Cave". Never had a mate that did not love music. Priorities.....

We live in a 1950s era ranch and are fortunate to have a large lot that was conducive to expanding the original footprint of the house. So I achieved a devoted listening room with professionally engineered acoustics by building a new addition on the back side of the house as an extension of the main floor living space. Actually, we built on a pair of matching additions in order to convert what was a rectangular-shaped house into an elongated U-shape with an outdoor courtyard cloistered into the heart of the U. The second, matching building addition comprises a new bedroom that made the construction project appealing to my better half.

The end result is a devoted listening room that is well integrated and well connected with the original living space. I agree with the prevailing sentiment here that I would not use the dedicated listening room nearly as frequently if it were in the basement or otherwise detached from our primary living space. Of course, the downside of this sort of custom construction project is that it is very expensive - much more so than the cost to simply finish or refinish some space within the original shell of the building.

Prior to building the dedicated room, my main audio system used to reside in our living room (to the severe detriment of the aesthetics and nonaudio function of that room). An interesting outcome of moving the big system out - and evolving our living room to a much more attractive and liveable space - was the noticeable loss of music in the center portion of the house. That hole has now been filled with a much lower profile secondary audio rig in the living room. The second system plays a key role when entertaining or dining in the center portion of the house or when sitting around the living room fireplace in the cold weather months. I also find myself listening to the secondary system periodically for a change of pace.

To me, the goal of good audio is to fill a house with great music which is why my main system is in my living room.

Filling the house with music will get many in trouble on a regular basis, like that old lady in that commercial for the $20 hearing device..........."Does that have to be so loooud?"