As luxury amenities go, screening rooms are passé. Or rather, they’re no longer enough for the discerning Hollywood set. A new wave of exclusive listening rooms (both public and private) is immersive, analog, acoustics-driven experiences beyond the niche subculture of audiophiles. These spaces are sanctuaries, refuges from digital saturation. They invite you to lose the phones, the shoes, the distractions and listen — really listen — surrounded by high-end audio gear to the tune of millions of dollars.
The moment is warm and human, centered around the sacred ritual of selecting LPs (or CDs or even reel-to-reel, sales of which are surging) from IRL libraries that don’t disappear into the ether.
An OG of the movement is artist and audiophile Devon Turnbull, who has created immersive HiFi Pursuit Listening Room installations that invite passersby to listen to curated music with intention. His latest, at the Cooper Hewitt, closed in August. His limited-run $11,995 Klipsch + Ojas kO-R2 speakers appeared in a vinyl listening room rendering at creative director Pharrell Williams’ Louis Vuitton fall 2026 men’s presentation in Paris, part of a Drophaus set conceived with Japanese luxury vacation-share brand Not a Hotel, whose creative advisers include Williams and fashion heavyweight Nigo. Turnbull is now building an elaborate music room for Not a Hotel: The Nigo House in Chiba, Japan, slated to open in April.
“The purest form of the high-quality audio experience is, by far, in one’s private home,” says Turnbull, whose starry clientele includes Julianne Moore and Mark Ronson. “It’s about being able to dedicate your attention. That’s not to say you can’t have a drink while you listen, but someone serving you a drink becomes an external input. I’m the kind of person who wants to shush people who are talking at a concert, so listening bars are my worst nightmare. There is real value to communal spaces, but it’s hard to do it right.”
One such space is the music-centric, members-only club Stylus, opening on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in early 2027 with architecturally integrated listening environments designed by Turnbull. Housed in the former Loho Studios building — once frequented by Patti Smith, Joey Ramone and Art Garfunkel — the “acoustic salon” boasts four listening rooms, a pro recording studio, stage and culinary programming by Michelin-starred chef Anita Lo. Curatorial music adviser Ethan Bourdeau of Bourdeau Acoustical Design explains that the main space contains a “spatial audio system so that artists can create sound sculptures by positioning sound in three-dimensional space in the room.” Another room is tuned to a 40 hertz sound-and-light entrainment therapy protocol, said to boost cognitive function.
Names like Jay-Z, Mark D and Beck drop by Turnbull’s OJAS Listening Room within Swiss brand USM’s modular furniture showroom in Soho to get in on the rotation.
“We listen to a lot of classical and jazz music, mostly acoustic,” says Turnbull. “The ultimate goal of high fidelity has always been, ‘Can I trick you into thinking the instrument is being played in front of you?’ The term hi-fi has almost come to mean fancy speakers. That’s a misconception; hi-fi speakers might not sound engaging if you’re playing contemporary pop or electronic dance music.”
Turnbull tells THR he has designed a line of shelving, seating and acoustic panels with Japanese brand Karimoku, landing in the U.S. next year. His new $5,000 OJAS Artbook Shelf 2 Speaker, due out in the spring, will allow for upgrade components to bump it up over time.
“A great speaker or turntable can have the same presence as a sculpture; there is beauty in the craftsmanship, the materials,” says L.A.-based interior designer Brigette Romanek, who has worked with Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Ryan Coogler, Gwyneth Paltrow and Demi Moore.
Exhibit A might be the oversize tulip-shaped wood horn speakers ($35,000 a pair) by A for Ara, created by Etsy founder Robert Kalin and former NASA engineer William Cowan and handcrafted in the Catskills. James Blake and Finneas are fans.
Common Wave Hi-Fi, an L.A. Arts District audio venue that counts The Weeknd and Robert Pattinson as patrons, hosts communal listening sessions. Owner Wesley Katzir rigs rooms with such top-of-the-line gear as Nagra hi-fi equipment from Switzerland and Devore Fidelity speakers, handcrafted in Brooklyn for $116,000 a pair. That was the combo he used for Jay-Z’s Roc Nation L.A. offices. Another statusy, arty piece is the $85,000 brass Kuzma Stabi XL DC turntable with a 4point tonearm.
The Ongaku Amplifier ($160,000) and TT Three Reference turntable ($65,000) — both by Audio Note U.K. — and $200,000-a-pair Lyra speakers by Rockport Technologies are favorites of Eric Gould, owner of Soundlux Audio in Miami, who curates bespoke home audio systems for an A-list global crowd. Next door, he is installing a system at Ura, an intimate, members-only sushi restaurant and curated jazz listening lounge opening soon.
“In Japanese culture, people will shut up and just listen to music; in the U.S., they can’t shut up, but that’s where the trend is going — away from hi-fi bars to smaller, dedicated spaces,” says Gould.
Hollywood interior designers are seeing an uptick in calls for listening rooms. “My clients who love their music are opting for listening rooms over full-size screening rooms or even spas and home gyms,” interior designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard (Cher, the Kardashian-Jenners) tells THR, adding that he’s currently building such rooms in private homes in Cairo, New York City, Los Angeles and Paris.
“One of those rooms has $1.6 million speakers; all have multi-hundreds of thousands of dollars in both equipment and design,” he says. “The acoustics are wildly important and have become probably the most expensive part of the design. They also want to display their record collections, either front facing or in categorized libraries.”
L.A.-based interior designer Jake Arnold (Katy Perry, Rashida Jones, John Legend and Chrissy Teigen) recently completed a speakeasy-inspired listening room with a glam ’70s vibe in Beverly Hills for Create Music Group CEO Jonathan Strauss.
“There’s a growing desire for spaces at home that encourage us to slow down and disconnect,” says Arnold. “Not everyone needs a formal dining room; perhaps a listening room is actually a more meaningful use of that space.”
Adds Romanek: “I talk about the importance of an exhale, of creating spaces that allow us to let go of the day and simply be. These rooms offer a way to step away from the noise, reconnect with yourself and let the music take you somewhere else. You feel as though you’re entering another state of mind.”
This story appeared in the Oct. 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.