How isolated is your hi-fi?

chris great looking set up love the look of mbl never heard though, sure they sound fantastic. i have their counter system krell evo/ b&w. whats up no vinyl? i believe there is a happy medium. a room which is dedicated and not. stereo/workout/home theater/office. seperate section of home but plenty to do and still the ability to dedicate and yet not.

I have a shared space now and am excited to have my own room soon only because I can make it much closer to ideal for audio then I ever could in a family room, but it has a fireplace and I am going to hopefully get a projector for movie viewing.
I am also going to have a very modest system in living room for casual listening and fun so why not have it both ways? Again the dedicated room is more about placement and looks of gear and treatments then it is about hiding out. All and all I think its gonna be the best of both worlds.

Your way works for me. Other thing is that many of us are multi-tasking at heart.

What's wrong with peace and quiet? I bought a large screen TV a few years ago and innocently installed it in my sound room. I thought everybody could enjoy watching it. My wife and daughter almost never go down there, but my 21 year old son spends gobs of time there watching TV or playing those awful totally loud and often violent video games. What's wrong with peace and quiet? The thought that he would install all those game consoles in the sound room never occurred to me.
If you are an avid music lover an isolated, as you call it, dedicated listening room with a music only system is the way to go.
So now I have a second system in the living room that I enjoy, but still the big rig is in the basement sound room so I always feel that I’m only getting a half serving when listening upstairs. One thing I will surely do when I move out of the present house is to have the sound room at ground level or higher with good sized windows giving me some sense of connection to nature. Oh, I may be moving to the Eastern Townships in the spring and wouldn’t mind having a view of a nice valley from a mountain top house.

I agree that some environments look pretty cold and uninviting. A semi-religious shrine of sorts => cold, austere and meticulously laid out with gear with no sign of life.

Other shared rooms look great and comfortable until you notice giant speakers that look anomalous or out of place in proportion to the room....like the "obelisk" in 2001.

Others are music themed and you have Elvis LPS's etc on the walls - I like these rooms a lot!

Perhaps it is all about balance - a pleasant place to spend an afternoon or evening rather than a cave.

I chose to hide all my gear, including speakers as I don't need to see it and I don't plan on changing stuff each year. The room I chose is a play/family/rec or den room - it had a pool table in it when we moved in, which I removed and now it has children's toys over the floor. The advantage is that it is large and is one of the only carpeted areas in the house plus it walks out into the garden so it is a pleasant place to sit. The only drawback is I have to share it with the kids sometimes, which is a great pleasure, as, after all, there is nothing more important in life.