The Miracle Room of Bern
Originally published in Professional Audio
Written by Harald Wittig
Reportage — SE MUSICLAB Bern, August 2022
Bern seems to be a place of human-made miracles — politically, athletically, and in the field of acoustics. For since recently, it has become home to a listening room of superlatives that is absolutely without competition.
Swiss engineering enjoys an outstanding reputation throughout the world and — as Professional Audio readers already know — the Swiss have repeatedly achieved groundbreaking accomplishments in audio technology. But when Igl Schönwitz of Amazing Sound Studios called us and told us that Jürgen Strauss, chief thinker of STRAUSS ELEKTROAKUSTIK and creator of exceptional studio monitors, had created “the best listening room in the world,” our response was enthusiastic in the spirit of Loriot: “Oh really!?” Yet after hearing several details, we knew that we had to visit the newly created SE MUSICLAB in Bern ourselves.
And so it happened that we became eye- and ear-witnesses to another Bernese miracle. We would now like to share that report with you.
A Research Center for Electroacoustics
SE MUSICLAB officially opened in mid-May of this year and understands itself as an internationally oriented research center for electroacoustics.
The initiator of SE MUSICLAB is Jürgen Strauss, who is regarded as one of the most important acousticians in the world. For several decades he has researched and taught in the fields of electroacoustics and room acoustics. Through his company, STRAUSS ELEKTROAKUSTIK GmbH, he offers consulting, conception, planning, and realization of electroacoustic and room-acoustic solutions for a wide range of listening situations.
For standardized studio monitoring applications — stereo and surround — the company offers the SE Mastering Studio Monitors, which are considered by connoisseurs to belong among the finest monitoring systems in the world. Naturally, these precision monitors were all developed by Jürgen Strauss and are built in Switzerland from the best carefully selected components.
The reference list of STRAUSS ELEKTROAKUSTIK GmbH is extensive and need not be reproduced here.
Jürgen Strauss has also taught and researched since the early 2000s at ETH Zürich in the fields of architecture, acoustics, and sound aesthetics. The creation of SE MUSICLAB is therefore the logical consequence of Jürgen Strauss’s extensive acoustic research.
The MUSICLAB is located in Wabern, a district of the municipality of Köniz near Bern, approximately twenty kilometers from the city boundary. The entire complex occupies the ground floor of the former bottling facility of the Gurten Brewery. As such, it is a sober industrial-purpose building that gives no indication from the outside of the extraordinary worlds concealed within.
Jürgen Strauss greets us early in the morning in excellent spirits in front of the building and leads us into SE MUSICLAB to present its three principal spaces one after another: THE STUDIO, the OPC, and THE LAB itself — the announced listening room of superlatives.
THE STUDIO: The Optimal Recording Room
Anyone deeply involved with recording technology has experienced it: you enter a room and immediately know, “Recording can happen here.”
The recording room of SE MUSICLAB, called THE STUDIO, is such a room.
It has a floor area of 38 square meters and a height of six meters. There is abundant daylight, yet the ambient noise floor remains below 25 decibels. The absence of parallel walls and the specialized, highly elaborate materials ensure that there are no acoustic disturbances such as flutter echoes, standing waves, or modal phenomena.
Jürgen Strauss summarizes it succinctly:
“Nothing booms. We tried everything — there are no acoustic disturbances of any kind.”
In addition to the room geometry and materials, an ingenious system of Helmholtz resonators combined with fabric-roll absorber systems ensures this result. All are movable, making it possible to tune the room according to musical criteria.
The reverberation time can be varied from 0.5 to as much as 1.2 seconds, or the recording room can be adapted to the instrument being recorded.
“For example, if we were to close the bass absorbers while opening everything else, a double bass would sound wonderfully full — almost physically graspable with the ears,” explains the acoustician.
The bass could then be optimally recorded directly with DPA 4006A pressure microphones, as there is a cooperation with the Danish high-end microphone manufacturer.
When asked whether it was difficult to secure DPA as a cooperation partner, Jürgen Strauss replies not without pride:
“In fact, contrary to everything I had been told beforehand, it was quite simple. DPA liked my concept for the MUSICLAB in general and this recording room in particular. They only wanted permission to film and publish a video. In return, they equipped us with a fine collection of their microphones.”
The recording room was not even part of the original planning:
“The first design included two small studios and originally an architecture office was also supposed to move in here. But that ultimately did not fit, so I redesigned everything and conceived the recording room.”
This occurred relatively late, only in summer 2021, although the planning itself was completed very quickly:
“It did not even take fourteen days. I have so much experience that I completed the design and digital simulation very quickly.”
The result is therefore an outstanding recording room that recommends itself as an ideal recording location in the best musical sense for acoustic instruments and voices.
That the MUSICLAB was also conceived as a rental studio is emphasized by Jürgen Strauss:
“Anyone who wishes to make especially high-quality recordings and mix and master under truly optimal conditions will find ideal circumstances at SE MUSICLAB.”
Musicians are optimally supported at SE MUSICLAB by a team that includes, alongside Jürgen Strauss himself, recording engineer Martin Ruch, Tonmeister Christoph Utzinger, and musician and electrical engineer Gardar Edvaldsson.
STRAUSS ELEKTROAKUSTIK GmbH itself has also found its operational center in the MUSICLAB. Opposite THE STUDIO is the workshop where the SE Mastering Monitors — the large SE-MF-2.1, the medium SE-MF-4, and the nearfield monitor SE-NF-3 — are manufactured. Upstairs is Jürgen Strauss’s light-filled office, where he can pursue “the next twenty years” of his vocation.
“But let us continue,” he says. “There is still much to see — and to hear.”
OPC: The Dreamworld Capsule
We continue deeper into SE MUSICLAB while Jürgen Strauss explains the still unfinished One Person Cinema, or OPC:
“We are dealing here with a space optimized for audiovisual applications for a single person. The user sits inside the OPC and can enjoy or edit films and games completely free from visual and acoustic distractions.”
The OPC resembles a meticulously crafted room capsule built according to the highest standards of craftsmanship. Whoever enters it can, in a figurative sense, travel into other spheres — seated extraordinarily comfortably in an ergonomically designed pilot’s chair while enjoying the best possible sound and image quality.
“The OPC was developed by two former students of mine. They made absolutely no compromises. The integrated Sony Trimaster monitor offers image quality that is second to none and represents an absolute professional reference.”
Thus the OPC presents itself as a one-person editing suite or testing environment for electronic gaming.
Jürgen Strauss adds:
“When we presented the prototype, we practically had to pull the gamers out of it by force. Faced with the audiovisual opulence that the OPC offers, they would have preferred to glue themselves permanently to the seat.”
Still, we manage to tear ourselves away, because the true destination of our visit — the room itself — is close.
Yet Jürgen Strauss also understands how to build anticipation and carefully stage a reveal. He points to a bronze statue that seems to approach every visitor:
“That is the ‘Dancing Faun,’ discovered in the ruins of Pompeii. This bronze sculpture is a cast of the original, which is located in the museum in Naples. I like the idea that the Faun will dance here in the MUSICLAB for the next twenty years.”
The sculpture is unquestionably beautiful — one before which countless imitations fade into insignificance, if not directly into dust.
One more turn around the corner — and before us rises the Clay Rotunda, the outer shell of THE LAB.
THE LAB: The Room of Rooms
The so-called Clay Rotunda is a freestanding cylindrical structure made of clay that forms the sound-isolated outer shell of THE LAB.
The architectural form combines clay — a sustainable and waste-free building material — with computer-assisted design technologies. With a diameter of nearly eleven meters, the structure reaches a height of five meters using only fifteen-centimeter-thick unreinforced natural clay walls.
It was constructed by a mobile robotic system that assembled more than 30,000 soft clay bricks over a period of fifty days.
The Clay Rotunda was realized by Gramazio Kohler Research at ETH Zürich in collaboration with several partners: LEHMAG, a construction company specializing in clay architecture; Seforb Sàrl, an engineering office focused on structural calculations for clay buildings; and Brauchli Ziegeleien, a leading brick manufacturer pursuing less CO₂-intensive brick production.
This first-of-its-kind robotically constructed clay structure was completed in approximately three months and impresses immediately upon first sight — not only because of its sheer scale, but also due to its archaic, almost timeless presence.
While Jürgen Strauss describes the construction of the clay dome, we are increasingly curious to discover what lies inside.
“Go ahead and open the door. It weighs 250 kilograms — and don’t worry — you can open it,” he says.
We pull the door open by its solid wood handle and marvel at the ease with which the massive portal swings open. A counterweight system makes it possible.
Jürgen Strauss smiles:
“Yes, sometimes we have ideas.”
We follow him through the curved corridor and enter the acoustic dome.
What immediately strikes every visitor is the silence of the room itself.
“At the Rütli, in a mountain valley during winter, I measured a diffuse-field sound pressure level of 23 dB(A). Here we are another three decibels lower — at 20 dB(A).”
The reverberation time remains stable at 0.3 seconds all the way down to 20 Hertz and falls only slightly above five kilohertz to 0.25 seconds.
The floor reflection had not yet been damped at the time of our visit, as Strauss still wanted to gather additional experience before finalizing it. Even so, the first significant reflection arrives at −24 decibels, substantially below the already strict professional audio requirement of −18 decibels.
When asked why he chose a stable reverberation time of 0.3 seconds, Strauss explains:
“We wanted to preserve the acoustics of a conversational space and avoid the extremely artificial sound of rooms with reverberation times below 0.15 seconds. Many people already have problems in such ‘dead’ rooms — nobody truly feels comfortable there anymore. After all, this room is intended for listening and working.”
Thanks to its construction, the listener at the approximately 4.6-meter listening distance sits inside the critical distance above 100 Hertz.
“To put it casually, it feels like a somewhat oversized nearfield monitoring system.”
The room’s 24-part ribbed dome construction functions as a structural framework for the integrated loudspeakers and absorbers. Everything is mechanically decoupled and comprehensively integrated into the design.
The loudspeakers themselves are line-source systems developed by Jürgen Strauss, because point-source loudspeakers no longer made sense at listening distances approaching five meters.
The room is designed for 3D audio, and every relevant playback format can be reproduced:
Mono, Stereo, 5.0, 7.0, 7.14, Dolby Atmos in all variants, and immersive 3D audio formats.
In short, audio professionals can mix and master virtually any audio format in THE LAB.
This also means that recordings made in THE STUDIO can immediately be mixed and mastered in THE LAB with its 24.5-channel system.
“This possibility does not exist elsewhere. In the MUSICLAB, the engineer can work directly from recording all the way to mastering.”
The seven primary channels can be monitored without any analog or digital correction systems in the signal path whatsoever.
“That also means you can compare amplifiers or digital-to-analog converters here, because you are hearing under perfect monitoring conditions.”
Thus the name THE LAB feels entirely appropriate.
Jürgen Strauss provides an especially fitting comparison:
“Here in Wabern is METAS, the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology responsible for all national standards and measurements. Its director attended our opening and remarked that the MUSICLAB is, in a sense, the office of weights and measures for sound reproduction — because truly linear reproduction with the lowest possible distortion is guaranteed here.”
Before listening ourselves, we ask Jürgen Strauss why this room exists and what it personally means to him.
He pauses briefly, smiles, and answers:
“A room like this has never before existed anywhere in the world. At least I know of no comparable example — and I should know. I wanted to create the optimum in room acoustics, architectural acoustics, and electroacoustics.”
He continues:
“I succeeded in bringing together a group of financial backers, and this made it possible to realize my vision of a perfect listening room without any budget limitations. Here, people can work, research, and also simply enjoy music. Because this room is also intended to function as the perfect concert hall for recorded music.”
The Final Listening Experience
What follows is several hours of listening unlike anything we have previously experienced.
We hear audiophile chamber-jazz recordings, perfectly produced fusion and world music productions, and we are even allowed to place our own recordings from recent months beneath the acoustic electron microscope that is THE LAB.
It becomes immediately clear that the extraordinary silence of the room, combined with a level of precision and detail retrieval we have never before encountered, reveals absolutely everything.
“Wasn’t there that moment where the soloist accidentally tapped the guitar top with his fingernail?”
We suddenly remember this detail while listening to a concert guitar duo recording — and in THE LAB, that exact moment is there.
Not artificially enlarged or exaggerated, but reproduced exactly as it exists within the recording itself.
Yet it is not only those details that become audible.
The sound of the recording room, the microphones, the instruments, and above all the musicians themselves — everything is present and reproduced in a manner that must be stated clearly: far more elevating, more emotional, and more musical than through our own familiar monitoring systems.
We thank Jürgen Strauss and Christoph Utzinger for this experience and conclude the evening by listening to current productions created at SE MUSICLAB.
A 5.0 surround recording of a jazz quartet performing a remarkable interpretation of “Take Five,” recorded, mixed, and mastered by Tonmeister Christoph Utzinger shortly before our visit, leaves us utterly astonished.
What a magnificent recorded sound.
THE STUDIO, combined with masterful microphone technique and world-class transducers, is clearly responsible for it.
And what an immersive bath of sound surrounds us while seated in the listening center of THE LAB.
This level of detail, this clarity extending from the deepest bass to the highest frequencies — with subwoofers extending response down to 12 Hertz, and without them still reproducing from 20 Hertz to 30 kilohertz — creates a listening experience that scarcely seems of this world.
And yet it is.
It is a human-made miracle of Bern, created by the acoustical genius Jürgen Strauss.
