Romy,
You maybe thinking of your a/c problem backwards.

In use, air conditioning vents become louder as the air speed and turbulence increase.
Reducing the aperture of a vent can increase noise because a reduced aperture increases air flow speed and turbulence (venturi principle).

You want somewhat more airflow but SLOWER air speed
You do NOT want a more powerful air pressure blowing harder and faster.

To get this you want to:
1 - use a more open vent style or
2 - remove the vent grill entirely or
3 - replace with larger vents or
4 - install additional vents without increasing the ducting attached to the primary manifold. You would have to divide the existing ducting or a use a small secondary manifold near the listening room vents. (This assumes the cooling of the listening room is now adequate and only a small increase in airflow is necessary if any – of course a long hot summer could alter your current appraisal).

Adding an extra duct/vent connected to the primary manifold would alter the relative cooling to the listening room without slowing down the airflow speed at the vents (although it would slightly reduce the air pressure on all vents in the house)

As a test, try removing the vent grills in your listening room, you should get more airflow with less noise. If this produces an improvement than going to larger or additional vents would be suggested.

About your kitchen a/c noise,
Some of these thoughts apply to your noisy kitchen ventilation.

Also, I would not be surprised if your kitchen a/c had a shorter and straighter duct than other rooms in your house. Air friction through the duct is increased by the length and bending of the duct. The vents in your house supplied by shorter and straighter ducts may have a stronger output than desired and are closed down producing more noise while vents with longer and more serpentine ducts are opened fully and produce less noise.

You could also reduce the kitchen vent noise by adding a larger or additional vent along with a duct constriction closer to the primary manifold. This would preserve the airflow and move the noise closer to the manifold where it is partially baffled by the ducting.

Adding an additional length of ducting and snaking the superfluous duct around would increase the noise reducing effect of the duct.

An a/c contractor probably has a bag of tricks for these modest problems and changes. Be glad that the sound and vibration from the a/c ventilation fan is not a problem – that is a more serious issue in terms of annoyance and remedy.

About your ceiling fans,
If you wish to increase the air circulation but not the basic a/c cooling in your listening room you are going to need better ceiling fans than the ones you described. Increasing air circulation is what ceiling fans do and work well and quietly doing.

Your ceiling fans should always become quieter as they are used at slower speeds (less vibration and air turbulence). If they don’t work that way, you are most likely hearing the groaning sound of the electric motors used at a speed they don’t like and not fan noise itself. You should rarely or barely hear a good ceiling fan in operation at slower speeds. They make a considerable improvement in summer cooling comfort and also in redistributing warm air in winter when they are barely moving.

Regards,
Robert

What an idiot I was.  I made a few phone calls and inquired about a few high end ceiling fans. The smallest 6” BigAssFan cost about $3K, I need two – so it is kind of too expensive. Some other best fans are around $1K each.  They all promise around 45dB noise, forgetting to say from which distance. At listening position my two ceiling fans fan at full speed do 58dB. The air noise does not bother me, the fans are large and the noise is relatively low frequency. What bothers me is the buzzing and the presence of the sound of closed “A” vowel. It feels like it is sound of motor or bearing…. Then I begin to read on the subject, here is for instance:

http://www.ceiling-fans-n-more.com/ceiling-fan-controls.php

Well, I have two SS dimmers that drive the fans. It has to be the problem. I took them off and put the regular switches. Hallelujah! The “A” hamming instantly gone and the fans begin to spin faster! Now they produce much more air flow then before and at listening position they do 49dB. The noise is not much lower but it has no annoying harmonics and I do not even need to lower the fan speed. Apparently the SS dimmers even at full bypass did screw the wave.  Well, the idiocy is not fully belong to me as the fans and the dimmers come with the house- and the guy who use to live here was master-electrician. Anyhow, the problem is gone.

BTW, ghpicard, the use of dimmers does not radiate electrical noise in my case. I mean it does and a single dimmer in house does fuckup up Sound very dramatically. It can be even measure not only heard. However I have dozens of dimmer in house and I use them very adhesively with zero impact to Sound.  The answer is PP2000. You can say whatever about the PP2000 but among many things that it goes absolutely perfectly is eradicatation of any sonic impact from dimmers. I did many experiments trying to detect if Sound would be affected by many of my dimmers. I was not able to detect it.

Jorge wrote:

I listened to Romys old system,  I am sure the new one sound better….

I need to admit that I absolutely adore my listing room. I like absolutely everything about it and if I enumerate what hat I like about it then the list will be long. Ironically, from a perspective of self-education I sometime try to nail down what would I do with my listening room if I built it from scratch and was not bound by any limitations of currently existing real-estate. Any my fantasies still go to the direction of multiple “random” cavities and I end up with the very same room that I currently have.

In the best scenario, building the room it from scratch, I would change two things.

First, I would make the house entry not directly to listening room and got rid of the entry door.  It is not that it bothers me but it would let me have another 7-8 feet of the self with records in the listening room. I do have another main entry to the house but I do not use at all and always use the entry in my house from deck. I do have an idea how to do it move my usable entry to another location but it will be combined with another project of 50K-60K price tag, something that might do in future but have no desire to do now.

Second, I would like my listening room to be 3-4 feet deeper, not wider but deeper. No I do not want to sit further from the residue of the back wall as it will screw up my midbass-horn time aliment (they live above the back wall). The purpose to have the room deeper is to have extra few feet of space behind the loudspeakers.

Macondo is 6 feet extended from the back wall to the center of the room. For Macondo topology I feel it is sufficient extension and under normal conditions Macondo would not read the wall behind it. But the “normal conditions” imply the wall behind loudspeakers to be treated and it is not my case. In my case I have 22 feet long, 4-section French glass door behind and in my estimation in order Macondo do not read them I would need extra 3-4 feet depth of the room behind Macondo. The 2 out of 4 sections of the French door I keep covered with acoustically-very-nice cellulose blinds but the mid 2 section I keep all time uncover and I feel that they do screw imaging, not too much but they do. Sure I can lower the blinds on them as well or I can put some kind of treatment on the glass but I like the open view. So, this brings me to the Asian man after whom I named the post.

It was over 10 year back in Vegas. I met at CES a guy who represented some kind of company or himself, I do not remember. All that I remember was that he was an Asian man and I can’t even say what ethnicity he was. So, this man showed me his product that at this time did not impress me as I had no need for it. It was some kind of heavy compound that he recommended to apply to glass in order to shape the reflective acoustic quality of glass. He claimed the he can rotate phase, up to 180 degree (!!!), with his applicator, let call it “applicator” for the luck of better name. I remember that I was arguing with him, suggesting that is imposable to reface phase with by his method but he was confident and proposed to try it.

So, my question is: did anybody know anything about that Asian guy or the technology he claimed to use. I admit the I would try his applicator at my glass now and would give to the technology very attentive testing in my room. If his applicator works then I might use it or perhaps combine his applicator with some very light, view not obtrusive acoustic treatment of my glass.

I do consider using some in-space resonators between Macondo and glass but I did not know the credible people who do them. Whoever I know who use the in-space resonators are accustomed to the Sound that I would not bother to improve by anything besides dynamite.

It is well known that the requirements to acoustic environment for life music and for audio installations are very different.   For life music we need much more what we would call in audio “live” acoustic setting, letting the instruments to breathe. For audio we need much more controlled environment, with much- much shorter reverberation time. What we in audio consider “too live” room would be “super dead” even for a string trio and in the environment those musicians would consider live enough for them audio out would hardly be able to operate as it will be too life for us.

I have a friend of my a few days ago playing in my listening room her viola. I was very much looking to hear it, in my old listening room I had stings playing many times. The result was pretty much what I expected: very direct sound with superb focus over distance. The listening of viola from 3 feet and from 20 feet does add some life reverberation but do not lose focus and sense of immediacy. This is not too great environment for musician to perform but it is exactly how I feel it has to be in a listening room for audio. Interesting was her reaction. She said that in my room she hears exactly what she does and it is a good place to practice.

RonyWeissman wrote:

I remember a picture of an enormous living room with large glass windows behind avantgarde trios, bookshelves running floor to ceiling on the sides. ….

RonyWeissman wrote:

This is one of my favorite topics.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Interesting the stressing the importance of the listening room Rakesh went into depth of discussing reference clocks and YL drivers that are very irrelevant to the subject of the rooms. The Rony’s comment about the expression of “ultimate way of life” is very accurately described what I feel. I had the very same objective what I was thinking about my current listening room: to have “family basically lives in the music room”. In my view my current listening room is very good accomplishment of the concept. The image about the in my view would depict the perfect technical setting for perfect listening room would hardly be friendly for living facilities as if you position 40Hz horns in front position then all bets are off and there is no way the room will be friendly for normal living. The way how I hided my midbass horns is very remarkable and no one would understand it unit you visit my room, hear the sound and see that the horn do not exist in the room, literally – they are not there, even they do offer the right sonic contribution.  With the horn in front position it very controversial. The only “interesting” solution that I know off is my old idea to hang the midbass horns in air between the acoustic system and ceiling. Jessie of all people could pull it off but I do not think his project have materialized yet. I would LOVE to see it happen another day. The idea same to me as I have seen people hanged a destroyed grand piano in air and it was absolutely spectacular decoration of high-ceiling loft. So, from purely conceptual standpoint I wonder if that level of civilian-friendliness that I have in my listening room might be achievable with front-located midbass horns. Rgs, Romy the Cat