CONSULTING SERVICESAudio & Home Theater Consulting
Independent curation and acoustic coordination for luxury listening rooms and media spaces. We do not sell gear—we partner with you to select the perfect system and coordinate the layout for your space.
THE PROCESSFirst, start with your ears.
We don't begin with a speaker count. We begin with how you listen. Whether you prefer the warm, detailed nuance of the classic British sound or something punchier and more up front, we translate your taste into the right match of pre-amp, amplifier, and speakers, built as a two-channel system first.
Then we arrange a private audition with a local dealer, using your own most-played tracks. You hear exactly what you're buying, in the sound that actually matters to you, before commiting to anything.
Then, tune the room to flatten response.
The finest system in the world still has to play inside your four walls, and the room shapes what you hear as much as the electronics do. We don't touch your architecture or your blueprints. We measure the space you already have.
Using calibrated microphones and analysis software, we map how sound actually behaves in your room, then work with leading panel makers to place treatments that eat up boomy bass and shrieking highs so your room allows the system to reproduce music without coloration.
Finally, grow it into a home theater, if that’s your goal.
A great home theater should first be a great music system. With your two channels locked in, we've already built the foundation for depth, imaging, and realism that extra speakers alone can never fake.
From there we add only what earns its place—a tonally matched center channel for clear dialogue, and a few well-chosen surrounds for atmosphere. You get the immersive theater you came for, without paying for boxes that don't improve the sound.
MY AUDIOPHILE ORIGIN STORYThe music is coming from the attic.
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I was drifting off to sleep in a small bedroom papered in brown and white doggie print when I heard my dad climbing the stairs to his listening room. His room was in the attic of a typical A-frame house, so the slope of the roofline went all the way to the floor. Egg crates were thumbtacked to the ceiling/walls to absorb sound, and in the center of the room was a reclining chair.
Dad would spend hours tweaking his sound, using a microphone, a test record and later CD, and an equalizer. The CD would play sounds that I could hear from my room. An announcer would say, “left 50 hertz,” and then white noise would play at that frequency. This was, of course, before automatic room correction software was built into amplifiers and speakers.
On this night he was listening to Fleetwood Mac, Rumours. Given the narrow staircase the sound traveled through to reach my ears, Stevie Nicks’ already ethereal voice took on a haunting evanescence as she sang “Landslide.”
Then came the angry chant of “The Chain:” If you don’t love me now, you will never love me again. The music stirred feelings in me that I didn’t yet have names for.
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In our house, music was never background noise. Listening was a physical act: Move the chair into position. Cue the record or CD. Have the dog settle in beside you, and press play.
That’s how I was introduced to Peter and the Wolf—the children’s symphony where David Bowie narrates and every instrument represents a character. And Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture—a piece famous for using literal, booming artillery cannons during the finale. On my dad’s stereo, it sounded so real that people on the street below ran for cover.
The gear changed as the search for perfection marched on. Listening sessions were one of the few things my dad would share that revealed anything about himself. Leonard Cohen’s “Joan of Arc,” sung live on the album, Cohen Live, brought him to tears. It does that to me now, too. I’m sure some of that is simply being a certain age, but some of it is what he taught me: how to listen, appreciate, and connect with music without distraction.
Through decades of listening sessions, with Dad and on my own, I learned—by ear—how individual components change a sound. How tubes create warmth in the music (and in the room). How speaker cables and interconnects are important and affect tonal balance. At first, I pretended to hear differences. And then I did.
My dad passed a year ago. He left me his Cary CAD 805 tube monoblocks, his silver Kimber Kables and interconnects, Dynaudio Focus 220s, an Esoteric P-2 transport, and a Mark Levinson No. 30 DAC. He also left me tons of vacuum tubes, Samurai swords and folding knives that took months to sell on eBay.
I learned a lot spending time listening with Dad. I didn’t, however, figure out exactly what made him tick. He was a fearful man, and sharing his emotions wasn’t something he was comfortable with. Music broke through that barrier and allowed him to feel, or maybe just overwhelmed his defenses.
I think the struggle for the perfect sound system mirrored something in Dad’s inner life—the tendency to get stuck in his own head, and the release that music gave him. His listening room was a place where he could feel something deeply without having to explain it.
In words sung by Joe Cocker:
Heart over mind
Yes I'm my father's son
And I'm inclined to do
As my father's done--Geoff Cestaro