2. misc-audio
  3. 151872-20253

Hotel Room Confessions - Best Sound at a Show?

I’m curious to know if line arrays and/or tuneable subs make speakers able to sound great in terrible conditions. Or can horns be the ideal hotel room rondevouz? A lot of people come up with a list of best sound, despite clearly terrible sounding rooms. They try to hear past what is assumed to be room problems.


I want to ask, if you have ever heard really amazing sound in a hotel room. Like, nothing needed to be made better, you’d be happy listening there forever. If so, what were the speakers you heard?

I've heard RELATIVELY stellar performances but I've never heard a hotel room sound even as good as my current, pitiful setup.


Have you? Did a line array, ESL or horn show how it could utterly tame the room and take you to heaven in a seedy hotel room with ugly carpets?
erik_squires
oregonpapa's avatar
oregonpapa
4,867 posts
 
A few years ago, I heard a system that was put together by Randy Cooley, owner of Optimal Enchantment in Santa Monica, California. It consisted of the most expensive Vandersteen speakers, big mono amps from ARC and all of ARC’s reference goodies. Randy knows his music and has impeccable taste in music.

The sound in that room was the closest to live that I’ve ever heard in the show environment. I’ve attended many shows over the years, and even worked rooms for a high-end dealer at several CES’s over the years.  

Other than that, I totally agree with erik_squires.

Very few rooms (maybe a couple) at the shows I’ve attended have me feeling that I’m missing anything at all when I get home and turn the system on. After hearing Randy Cooley's system, it became my benchmark. I made it my goal to get as close as possible to the sound of that system. With all of the tweaks I've done over the past few years, the system is right there, even surpassing what I heard in Randy's room in certain areas. 

Frank
roberttcan
248 posts
 
I posted a review of the Toronto show in this thread:
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/audio-show

Honestly, I can't say that line arrays were noticeably better, and certainly I did not make any notes on them. Not many rooms running subs, so difficult to come to a conclusion, but though bass was no doubt impacted, I don't think that was the primary fault in most rooms. 
ebm
9,311 posts
 
These threads make Audiogon so cool.
tpreaves's avatar
tpreaves
2,685 posts
 
ebm makes Audiogon cool !!!!!!!!!
teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
We’ve won ’best room at the (given) show’ many a time.

But then again, the other half of Teo Audio is a specialist in room taming (Taras K) and has done the acoustics for about 60 major film and series/etc productions.

Given the tools that Taras may bring with him.... he can generally step blind into a space and generally tame it to the point that it is at studio quality. To do that with a hotel room. Not a big deal. Go ahead, record in the given corrected space. No problemo. We're still talking abut the hotel room, BTW.

Film work is a magnitude harder, in many cases.
More to discover