It doesn’t happen too often that people decide to optimize the acoustics of their living room. But true audiophiles are of a special breed. Marcel from Almere in the Netherlands is one of them.
Marcel and his wife designed the room interior and commissioned Mutrox, a renowned Dutch acoustics specialist and studio builder, to develop and deliver the required acoustically active elements.
The main goal was to acoustically optimise the room while retaining the look and feel like a living room. The second and more demanding aim was to provide the opportunity to adjust the reverberation of the room, in this way giving the residents the opportunity to fine-tune the room acoustics at their discretion whenever they like.
Marcel and his wife finally opted for the use of false walls, acoustic curtains, and an acoustically active suspended ceiling. While the suspended ceiling is fixed due to the limited height of the room, the side walls and the front wall are made of various movable boxes that contain acoustically active elements such as absorbers and panel resonators.
The main objective was to optimise the room acoustically while retaining the character of a living room. The second, far more challenging objective was the desire to incorporate a way of changing the room's reverberation so that the occupants could adapt the room's acoustics to their current tastes and the style of music they were listening to at any time.
Marcel and his wife eventually opted for false walls, acoustically effective curtains and a suspended acoustically active ceiling. While the suspended ceiling is immobile due to the limited height of the room, the side walls and the front wall of the room consist of various movable frames containingacoustically active elements such as absorbers and panel resonators.
These boxes, as well as the suspended ceiling, are covered with acoustic cloth from Akustikstoff.com. 
Individual wall sections were also clad with strategically placed strips of wood, which meet the aesthetic criteria of the residents and also work as diffusors. »They render more ambience to the room. We find wood a great product to work with, it has character and it benefits the sound«, explains Marcel.
With a base reverberation of 0.41 seconds and a rather natural decay as well as with an almost linear frequency response with a slight dip around 55 Hz and a peak around 130Hz, the optimised living room boasts next to neutral audio reproduction with great balance, focus, and range of audibility. It perfectly suits the requirements for high-quality audio reproduction.
»It was a lot of work and we did it all ourselves. After all, the effort paid off: The room looks cosy and it’s nice to be in there«, says Marcel. »We are satisfied with the fabric. It was great to work with, has a fine-meshed structure, and, as you can see in the pictures, it looks fantastic when installed. I highly recommend it.«