Andrew Carballeira
Innovation Lead
Principal
Acentech collaborated with Andrew Sidford Architects, Silva Brothers Construction, and the building owner to design and commission this impressive listening room from the ground up. The owner has been a collector of vintage audio equipment for many decades and wanted a room that was conducive to both sharing music with friends and experimenting with circuit-level components.
The listening room is housed within a purpose-built 26-ft tall gambrel-style barn. It features an exposed timber frame enclosing a volume of 46,000 cu ft, with an electronics tech loft above a large garage. An elevator accesses basement audio equipment storage, the ground-floor listening room, and the electronics loft.
The loudspeakers serve as musical instruments, not as neutral devices for transparent reproduction. The room acoustics, technical systems, and building infrastructure have been engineered to provide a clean canvas for the unique loudspeaker system.
There are very few technical audio systems like this in the world, and fewer still whose environment and upkeep allows them to be heard with such attention. Beyond the novel engineering and technical achievements of the room, our work succeeds because the owner smiles when a 1/4” tape plays “Exile on Main Street” at 105 dBA.
Technical features of the listening room include:
Room Acoustics
Consistent reverberation time from 100 Hz to 8 kHz; custom-designed low-frequency absorbers for modal control from 30 Hz to 200 Hz; STC-55 exterior sound isolation with custom triple-pane windows.
Electro-acoustics
Full-range stereo reproduction chain from 15 Hz to 20 kHz; optimal position and absorber design based on in-field modal mapping of shell response; permanent loudspeaker support positions translated to bedrock by sand-filled steel columns.
Infrastructure
Isolated and balanced technical power, tied to foundation-embedded ground system achieving sub-ohm earth resistance; concrete-encased rigid metal conduit for all power and signals achieving 120 dB signal to-noise ratio; NC-15 HVAC background noise @ 4 air changes/hour.
