My home office is my personal retreat and hobby space, and on top of that I'm a WFH software developer, so I spend a lot of time in here listening to music. I have been piecing together my 2.4 system for the last 2 years, and it finally feels complete. I have no desires to change anything else, unless something dies.
The brain of the system is a miniDSP Flex (balanced w/ Dirac Live) that has proven to be one excellent and flexible piece of gear. The miniDSP sits on my desk with a Topping L50 and a Topping PA5 (Dec 2021 and still kicking baby!). The L50 is for a pair of Dan Clark Audio AEON 2 Open headphones, and the PA5 feeds a pair of Revel M105s. Both setups work nicely together with the Flex in that the L50 hijacks the input signal before the PA5 when it's turned on, and then a different miniDSP config preset is used that disables the subs and applies the
oratory1990 parametric EQ settings. The config presets on the miniDSP mean you don't need an extra output for a headphone amp, and the miniDSP controls all volume. It works excellent this way.
In addition to the PA5/Revels, the miniDSP also feeds
four 8" subs that I designed and built and are configured as stereo pairs. I am a big fan of stereo bass, and it's also present in nearly all of the music I listen to. There is a front and rear sub paired for each L/R channel. The miniDSP feeds the other 2 outputs to a t.racks DSP 4x4 mini, which adds delays before feeding a pair of Crown XLS1500's for the 4 subs. All the subwoofer gear hangs out on a shelf down low next to the front right sub. The Crowns have fairly quiet but audible fans that come on sometimes, but tucked down under here I don't hear them:
The four subs I built are different shapes because the front and rear subs needed to fit into different spaces. Generally speaking, the fronts had to be as narrow as possible, while the rear had to be as shallow as possible:
Below are some pictures of the room, and I have to say one of the highlights for me is the Ekornes office chair, which I acquired last year. It fully reclines and can make the listening experience feel nothing like "sitting at a desk." The price is a bit eye watering for an office chair, but it's lived up to my hopes for comfort and ergonomics and it's worth every penny.
To help with the room's small 10'x10' dimensions, I've treated the space in several different ways:
- front & side walls: 4" thick absorber panels (a total of 5 panels)
- windows: acoustic curtains (over 20 pounds and do an amazing job of neutralizing the window)
- ceiling: two 4" thick GIK alpha panels over the desk/listening position
- back wall: two 4" and two 6" GIK alpha panels
- desktop: two 21" oval cat bed desk absorbers (does limit max dB's when filled with cats, but otherwise works excellent)
The rear subs are visible in this picture, each tucked into the back corners.
Hovering under my main computer monitor is a small 6" HDMI display that runs
NowPlayingDisplay, a display server I wrote that shows full screen album art and information for my currently playing music. I absolutely love it and really enjoy having my music displayed this way!
To tie this all together and explain how it's hooked up better than words will, here is a system diagram of the whole thing:
