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Does a listening room help or hinder?

I once had my office and my system in the same room. I did my work and listened while I worked(sounds like a Disney song). I heard lots of music. Before I had the music in my office, I had it in the living room.

Well, I got the idea that I needed a listening room, so I moved my desk and computer and put it in another room. Now, I have a listening room. It isn't pretty, but it is as functional as I can get it. It has room treatments galore. Some aren't very pretty, but all of it functional. I have one chair in it, plus a little table next to the chair to hold any drink I may have.

Lately, I put on some music and sit down. Sooner or later I have this urge to get up and go do something on the computer. Then I sit back. Soon, I get up again to get something in the kitchen. Then I sit back down again. It goes like this through the entire time the music is on.

Now I listen to music less than I did before. In fact, the music is on now, but I am in a separate room.

Where did I make the mistake? How can I fix this delima?
matchstikman
newbee
4,093 posts
 
Sounds to me like you need some new music to explore. Hard to seriously listen to music that has become mundane or boring.
bignerd100
515 posts
 
Lots of people treat music as a religious experiance(and it often can be). They hear good sound for the first time and are suddenly off to chase the Holy Grail of audiophilia. After years of buying and selling diferent peices of equipment, gradually improving their system in ever smaller increments, trimming the poorly recorded fat from their music collection, they reach a point of either satisfaction or neurosis. Friends stop making music recomendations because they know it couldn't possibly be recorded as well as your coveted ten or twenty "perfect" recordings. The loan audiophile sits alone in his dark basement with only the tubes of his $5,000 preamp to keep him company.

Get your office back into the listening room before it is too late! Get some buddies who listen to "boom-boxes" over to have some beers and talk about the sport of choice(while listening to something that completely rocks on your system). Save the serious listening for the recording engineers and just enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Good luck!
inpepinnovations1e75
395 posts
 
How can you say that you are "listening" to music if you are doing something else, such as working on a computer?

I have a listening room and use it for listening. When in another room (office, kitchen), I use the listening room system to supply "background" music, but then I am not really listening (more like "hearing"), so it isn't really important how good the system sounds.

There is no such thing as "multi-tasking" when it comes to music listening.

Bob P.
hooper
396 posts
 
I definitely think there are different levels of listening--primarily critical and background. As mentioned above, I have my computer in my listening room, and I can certainly listen to music while playing on the computer, just not critically. In fact, sometimes listening to music this way ("background") is more enjoyable than listening critically, because I'm not worried about all the audiophile minutiae that so often gets in the way of enjoyable listening. When I want to listen critically, the computer and lights go off, and I do the audiophile thing.
robm321
932 posts
 
Bob is right. If you want background music, use your laptop speakers. Save the listening room for serious listening. Time is an issue with me as well. I can't just sit there for hours listening as I have things that have to get done, so I can relate to listening to a song or two - then doing something and so on.

But just set time aside where you clear your mind and just consentrate and enjoy the music. If you have a laptop, you'll just get busy with that and the music may sound good, but you're not really listening.
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