I don't know if saying which is more important, room vs. gear is the right way to go about this.
I think that if you are assembling a good system, you owe it to yourself to deal with the room early as best you can.
Based on a lot of listening, both to audiophiles AND to systems I do believe that different consumers are more or less sensitive to the room. That they can in fact hear fine differences in an acoustically messy environment. Me, I absolutely cannot. I need at least some room treatment before I can listen critically.
There's also the absolute truth that getting a good room often ends a lot of gear swapping and that you may end up with smaller, less expensive, but not less performing, gear as your room now behaves very well with a wide variety of gear.
I think that if you are assembling a good system, you owe it to yourself to deal with the room early as best you can.
Based on a lot of listening, both to audiophiles AND to systems I do believe that different consumers are more or less sensitive to the room. That they can in fact hear fine differences in an acoustically messy environment. Me, I absolutely cannot. I need at least some room treatment before I can listen critically.
There's also the absolute truth that getting a good room often ends a lot of gear swapping and that you may end up with smaller, less expensive, but not less performing, gear as your room now behaves very well with a wide variety of gear.