It’s finally time to add all those finishing off bits, post fully finished images of the room, and sign off on this part of the ‘build blogs’ for Sonority Design.
I have been asked many times – “what next”, and the honest answer is, I do not know. There is no more room here to do another room, and I do not think it’s at all worthwhile even thinking about another or a good, long time.
I am spending time listening to and enjoying my music collection, and indeed, ‘Blog 2’ that will follow on when this one gets archived (but still available to view) will be simply the kit I use in the studios and the music played on it.
Looking back over all that time spent building, coming up with fixes for unforseen issues, what Covid did, and what it allowed for me to do, I now see just what a ‘labour of love’ this project has been.
For me, apart from all consuming of time and funds, it was genuinely fascinating, and I did have to learn some skills that I never thought I would need. How much timber I got through was fairly amazing, but all put to good use, and I really like the final, finished look of it all.
Hopefully, my guests and clients feel the same.
This set of blogs has taken some time to complete, and I hope some can use the information / images as inspiration and instruction for some of their own use. Nothing is massively difficult, and everything can certaily be learnt, given time and patience.
All of the pages from this ‘Build Blog’ will shortly become archived, but still accessable from the main Sonority site, making room for ‘Blog II’ which will become the ‘Kit & Music’ blog moving forward.
Who knows, maybe I will get to greet you here one day in the future. thank you for taking the time to read all of this and get to this point.
A big shout out to Bill Bishop of Arcanum Design [email protected] for the final Hi Resolution / HDF images.
Signing off for now – Stephen.
I will leave this with a few words from visitors here, firstly from James, a long time client / friend :-
I have been fortunate enough to have known Steve at Sonority Design for the last 7 years and when I first popped up to visit him back in 2015 he had just completed his first listening room. Steve’s email to me way back then suggested the “office was a bit special” which as I was to find out was an understatement.Steve’s office also doubled as his listening room which I think took about 18 months to construct and indeed it was a magical environment in which to listen to music. Over about 5 years I popped up regularly to listen to different equipment in that first room of Steves and it taught me a great deal about room acoustics and how to build a controlled listening environment. We also got to listen to a fair bit of music!Steve soon followed up with a smaller second listening room which was also superbly constructed and elevated the office space once again but even back then I think the seeds of Steve’s final and third listening room were sown. There was a huge space in the building that he had been eyeing up as a possible third listening room but before any work could take place the rest of the building had to be refitted and renovated to a very high standard which meant the roof space of the building and the ground floor had to be completed first. A few years and a huge amount of work happened and these were completed and then about 2 years ago Steve started on his 3rd and possible final epic listening room. I had not seen too much of the work undertaken in this room as Covid had struck but last week I was kindly invited to both view and listen to Steve’s final room. I had been following his blog on the construction of the room but even though the photography gave so much detail I was not prepared for the actual experience of walking into this 3rd room now it was finished.
I walked up the stairs to meet Steve in the new room and as I entered I walked into a very special and completely unique world. The room not only looked fabulous, it had a character and feel that had been created with superb use of both wood panelling, coloured facias for the sound absorbing panels and an abundance of extraordinary lighting, I think there were 12 separate circuits.
Steve had knocked it out of the park with this room. It took me a while to take it all in. His attention to detail and craftsmanship were absolutely second to none and the whole effect was both exhilarating and calming at the same time. You felt you were somewhere very special indeed!
Obviously the huge amount of acoustic engineering was there lurking beneath the surface and indeed much of Steves hard work but it had all been cleverly engineered and incorporated into the overall visual appearance of the room so it did not particularly look like an acoustically modified space, however as soon as we sat down to listen it became apparent the purpose of the room had been executed wonderfully.
I felt Steve’s first listening room was a benchmark in room acoustics but this 3rd room achieved an even greater performance in acoustic modification. It was quite extraordinary how it allowed his system to sound absolutely right with complete control across the frequency spectrum. I noted how spacious the system sounded in this room and very much alive. The room created that perfect balance between live and dead and so what you heard was just the performance of the equipment and very little from the room, it was still live where it needed to be but under complete control.
One effect of this was that wherever you positioned yourself in the room it sounded excellent. For anyone lucky enough to visit Steve and listen to music and equipment in this new room they are in for a very special experience indeed both visually and aurally.
James.