The Red Room

 

My listening room is starting to take shape. Here you can see my S3 horn prototype - soon to be replaced with the final version coming out soon. Next to it you can see HE2 and in the middle of the room a new concealed rack that sits in an old fire place. The rack comes out on wheels. Soon a power point will be added inside the rack and this will mean no power cable coming out. 

I've allowed for a set of cables to run from the power amp to drive a pair of passive speakers. You can see here I've integrated the binding posts.

The rack has a source that will soon be changed, it will run as a digital transport into an Emotiva surround processor which then feeds the DSP active crossover (Behringer Ultradrive DCX2496). Active mains (S3) will be driven by the Emotiva multi channel amp. UPA700.

 

 How does he fit it all in the fireplace? He doesn't. Here is rack 2:

This rack contains power amps to drive the surrounds, woofers and sub. Only the woofer amp is shown right now, along with the custom wall plate. It was neater to create just one wall plate and cut a big hole that makes it easier to run so many cables down the wall. To get the cables all the way down, I had to cut 3 holes in the wall, even though I had under floor access. This is where you can see the benefit of DIY cables. Everything is cut to the exact required length and it avoids a birds nest of cables. There is no way to buy the lengths you require in this situation and there is no way to have so many cables neat otherwise with this kind of setup. I don't enjoy making my own cables but it's the best way to get things neat.

This rack is located inside a wardrobe, however, it is situated where a return air duct was previously installed. This means the power amps will blow their exhaust air out an existing grille (not shown).

S3 prototype and HE2. The original passive has been replaced with a more complex version. 
Just a little bit more work before it's ready for release.

Left surround. This is an active speaker with an 8" midwoofer and waveguide loaded compression driver, fully active with high sensitivity and high output. It is a ported box to keep the efficiency high. Very heavy and solid with bitumen rubber damping. The block to which it is attached is very solidly anchored to the structure - a solid noggin was added for this purpose. As a result, you could attach monkey bars to it, it's that solid. Speakon speaker connector is used here.

The surrounds are a little higher than usual due to the door way in an inconvenient location.

 The whole system powers up with a remote switch shown here. Even the second rack in the robe.

All this is preparation for setting up the red room for demos for both Red Spade Audio and the Loudspeaker Kit.  Cables run through the concrete base of the chimney, under the floor, through the ceiling and through the walls. It's been a big job to get it all done and my back isn't happy about it!

Coming soon:

• Pyrotek Cosmo midrange absorber panels
• Pyrotek flocked foam panels
• Custom printed image absorber
• Custom baffle/bass traps
• Custom bulkhead traps over the rear wall
• Floor rug
• Diffusers
• New source and media streamer
• S3 complete and installed
• New LSK kits