the Listening Room

Rives, if the consultation was free then I would ask how I could make my room acouticaly neutral, child,pet proof and easily maintained for as little money as possible. Cost, safety and inconvience would be concerns.

-Dedicated room, all 2 channel
-Would like to get thorough analysis of room acoustics and see some component placement recommendations.
-Would have a hard time getting the wife to allow door, window, or wall rebuilding.
-Visual asthetics be damned, I usually listen in the dark.

Thank you all for your responses thus far. Some of these response are a little bit what I expected--some are not. I would like to comment on a few. First is aesthetics. Room acoustics do not have to be ugly. If you have an existing room and you want to do it very inexpensively, the ugly treatment will get you there. But for really, very little money, acoustical treatment can virtually disappear. In new construction, there is never a good reason to show acoustical treatment, as it can be less expensive and often work better when it's built in. The second issue is functionality. This, so far, has only come up a few times but I feel like it is tremendously important. When designing (or re-designing a room) you really have to take into account total functionality. Will the room be used to entertain, do you have children or pets that like to play with those knobs and chew on the hose like stuff coming out of the back of the speaker. These are very important real world issues and any acoustical engineer that is designing a listening room for the home needs to be attentive to these things. Unfortunately, many think they are designing a room for a studio. The home environment is not a studio. The one that can be very challenging, and came up twice is the open floor plan. This can be difficult particularly if you have a situation that has a lot of "hard" surfaces and little way to cover them without harming the aesthetics. These rooms take a lot of time to figure out, but we have had some result in stellar sound that was better than some of the small rooms we've done.
Again, thank you, this is all very helpful to me and please continue with more rooms.

I am lucky to have a dedicated, 2 channel music room. For me, the goal would be to eliminate any effect the room has on the musical preformance. The primary concern and challenge is recognizing what defines a technically correct solution. For example, if the room set up is acoustically flawed, without on-site assistance by someone with golden ears, how do I recognize what I am listening for or know when I am "there"?

Rives,

We have just finished remodeling our dedicated HT and music room. It will be used for about 50% HT and 50% two-channel listening.

I listen to mostly acoustic jazz so my first goal is to accomplish extremely smooth and articulate bass with no change in volume as the player moves up and down the fretboard.

I can't stand a dead room so I will be looking for a lively sound but without echo or too much reverberation. A fine line I know.

I don't mind acoustical treatments showing as long as they are artistic looking and fit into the scheme of the room's decor. Actually I think their apperance can add to the room's purpose and feel.

As this is a dedicated room we don't have to worry about children or pets creating any problems.

Hope this falls into the type of situation you are looking for.

Steve