I think it's more complicated than simply "Concrete vs. timber".
Many houses in the US/Canada are timber framed, meaning that the interior wall surfaces are "drywall", or plasterboard as it would be called in the UK. I suspect that the sonic behaviour of rooms within these dwellings may be less predictable, owing to the ease with which the wall surfaces can move, but dependant on how they are fixed, which would obviously vary from house to house. Certainly I would expect glass-fronted cabinets placed across the corners of a room to produce horrendous effects in a typical (masonry) UK house, but as Vuk's pictures show, this is obviously OK in his (timber framed) case.
Concrete block (or "brick & block") with cavities and often with a suspended timber floor is probably the "standard" for the UK, and allows against-wall speakers to work more or less as designed. Sometimes a solid floor can be an improvement, sometimes not.
Reinforced concrete, on the other hand (building "moulded" from wet concrete in formers, with steel rods in it) makes a very excitable, resonant structure which is easy to "get going" by feeding it particular frequencies. Bob A. had terrible trouble as he has a near-cube shaped room, with RC floor and ceiling, and it took IBLs to tame it...
Of course, hotels where hi-fi shows often take place are universally reinforced concrete, and the less they intend to charge for rooms, the cheaper and less damped the construction, and the more problems with sound (Novotel, anyone?).
One of the nicest-sounding locations I've ever heard was the main room of a really comfortable house in Rovaniemi (sp?), Finland. It was about 25 x 35 feet with about a 9–10 foot ceiling, and a triple-glazed glass wall at one end with a grand piano in front of it. There was a huge corner fireplace, and both floor and ceiling were 4" thick boards on huge joists. The walls were stacked 12" logs (bark removed, light coat of seal to filter UV and keep the wood pale) with glass wool insulation trapped between them, and the whole bulding was designed to be warm with temperatures of -25C outside. Footsteps didn't echo, voices were clearly audible (and not echo-y) from one end of the room to the other without shouting. The house belonged to a local artist and just seemed so ideal, as its construction was so simple (large bits of tree) and so overwhelmingly effective in all respects. No, it didn't have a Naim system installed, but the piano was a big Bosendorfer…
Just my take!
Best;
Mark
(an imperfect
forum environment is
better than none)
[This message was edited by Mark Ellis-Jones on MONDAY 08 January 2001 at 09:26.]
As I think I'll go tomorrow to buy a house like Mike's I wonder maybe I have to cancel my plan because of the system sound and I'll stay at my humble appartment (BTW - wooden houses are rare in Israel).