About the importance of the room vs the electronics


https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/acoustics-and-critical-listening/
Acoustics and Critical Listening.

As @ erik_squires and others have often mentioned ;  the room is often forgotten  . We  put too much amphasis
on electronics.
128x128maxwave
What would be reasonable, intelligent, and defensible is to say the room is as worthy an element of a sound system as anything else. No more important than the AC line, the speaker cables, the cartridge, or any other component in the chain. But that for some reason is the last thing certain people will admit.
Your remark point to a TRUTH a very important one: all matters in audio experience, all details, working with an audio system...

BUT, there is a BUT, most if not all ordinary room even those dedicated to audio, if they lack passive adequate treatment and ESPECIALLY active controls , unbeknownst to the owner, ESPECIALLY if his electronic gear is very good and costly, all ordinary room will give only a fraction of the S.Q. the audio system could have given...

I listened to hugely costly gear that sound horrible in what seems a minimally treated room.... And trust me i know that the problem is NOT the piece of gear at all.... It is not normal that my 500 bucks system sound more musical for me and on par with details.... The problem is the room unbeknownst to the owner is not up to the task, and my room is....It is the reason why i am proud of my room, not so of my gear even it is well chosen one and even if i love them....

Past a certain point in quality, which is NOT at all very high in dollars, few thousand perhaps, ALMOST ALL, if not ALL upgrade will never rival or compare with a very effective passive AND active room treatment in S.Q. increase...

You said it yourself visiting Mike Lavigne Room, almost anything will sound good there...

For people owning an AVERAGE good system like mine, the room acoustic control is the royal road to S.Q. without necessarily investing money, thanks to the fact that in a small room active controls, using many tools but especially Helmholtz method, can transform totally all system in a better one.... But i will repeat for the slow learner that nothing will make a bad system a good one, nor transform my average system in the best in the world....

But i prefer my actual system in my room, to a 100,000 dollars one in a bad room....

It takes me 2 years full time to get my room right.... Nobody teach me how.... Sellers of acoustic treatment sells too costly for my purse then i was in the obligation to improvise all passive treatment using my ears and what is at hand.... But the greatest upgrade come one month ago with the Helmholtz method which i developed designing my own mechanical equalizer with 24 discarded pipes and tubes and various types of Straws.... It take me 50 hours to tune it relatively well, fine tuning the speakers response of the tweeter wavefront in one speaker with the bass wavefront in the other speaker making the two ears synchronizing  able to better locate the FIRST wavefront in the room...The mechanical equalizer did not work like an electronic equalizer with a tested response frequency for a microphone andfor ONLY a very smal location in millimeters but with a relative large bandwidth of sound for all the room, 2 main wavefront from the  left speaker driver and right speaker tweeter, to each one of the ears by direct wave and a  reflected different one for each single ears...The timing of the early and late reflections and their reverberation time is the key.... The tubes and pipes created an ACTIVE room, or activate the room so to speak, adding to it more different pressure zones which are designed for some frequencies and modify then  the resultant timing  and content of the wavefronts for each ears...

This method make me able to balance these 2 acoustic factor, the ASW the source sound width and the listener envelopment factor LEV... these 2 factors are related by some tresholds in the timing wavefronts....This make me able after that to experiment with the Schumann generator grid effect on the LEV factor....Disconnecting completely or partly the S.G. grid decrease the LEV factor...This with my experiment with shungite and quartz on the capacitors reveal to me the physicality of the effect induce by the Schumann generator grid....


Without active controls i will have never been able to test that acoustic aspect of the S.G....


My best to you and to all.....






@millercarbon´´ You are lost , dead lost ´´ if you think that I think  that a Bose Radio
sound as good as a 300B  tube in a good acoustic room.
It is @bigkidz  that brough this . I took his idea and inflated it to the
an absurd level.You haven’t seen that. On which planet do you live?
´´You’re just upset because ´´ you are not used to be  counter attacked.  It is funny to see you , play the psychologist . You would rather need one.
I have just brough this thread as a discussion, with the link up above. YOU are here to win. You should give your feedback to the writer of the article.

About attacking others , it is more your trade mark than me.
´´ Psychologicly’´ speaking , it is called : Projection . A defence mechanism of the EGO.
Some members  here think about themeselves as God.
Well ,... I am  atheist

regards





It is odd that some think it is vitally important to isolate their cables from vibrations and spend a fortune doing so, but they are happy to laugh at the much much larger effect of their walls being excellent reflectors, and vibrating at 70hz, and having 0.6 second decays of that source of vibration. 
Maybe it is easier to write a big cheque for a tweak with a negligible effect and bang on about it, rather than really accept the vibrating elephants in the room. 
@millercarbon
@maxwave

Both of you seem to thing that I am mad? Not sur why that is. Yes maxwave I read into the real thingie - my bad.  I was thinking that most people want their systems to reproduce sounds like real instruments - again my bad for jumping to a conclusion on a topic that was not presented for thought.

The Bose radio thing was a joke lighten up please - I did not intend to make anyone feel anything but a little love!

Although MillerCarbon I would love to hear the Raven amp.

Happy Listening.
I will give an example of the LISTENER ENVELOPMENT concept and acoustical experience (LEV) for any audio system to test yourself...

It take a great control of the room to hear this :

Threepenny opera of Kurt Weill with Lotte Lenya 1958 version :

https://www.amazon.com/Weill-Threepenny-Opera-Kurt/dp/B0000026HI/ref=pd_sbs_2?pd_rd_w=6koxC&pf_r...

listen side no 15, The procurer ballad, 4minute 38 seconds:

In my room the male voice sound in my left ear like with an headphone, same for the feminine voice singing in my right ear at the same moment, the 2 voices seems coming from behind me, opposite to the speakers location and the orchestra seems in front of me behind the actual speakers location, at 8 feet distance, filling all my front wall between the speakers but the sound coming from behind the wall that is behind them.... i have also the impression of 2 other virtual speakers behind me on each side of my ears.... Like if there are 4 speakers in my room... There are many sides of this cd that give the same effect not only this 15th side...But this one is particularly spectacular...You will undestand why i trashed my 7 headphones in a drawer and will never bought none other....

This is in my regular sitting position...

It is no more true in nearfield listening... On this same side the 2 voices seems now coming with the orchestra and no more separately from the orchestra, in opposite direction, like in my regular listening position....In near listening the sound seems a "bit" more detailed but is less livelier or less natural and sound exactly like in an headphone but better with my speakers/room... Passive and active room controls work EVEN for near listening,but at a lesser degree for sure but work very audibly also, contrary to a false popular misunderstanding of the way the extraordinary speed of sound cross the room and affect it, in relation with the 80 milliseconds of critical analysis time treatment from the brain to make sense of these wavefronts travelling near 80 times per second in my room...Each wavefront is a bunch of frequencies travelling together and coming from slightly different pressure zones of the room meet in each ears differently for the brain timing analysis...

It is an example of ACTIVE room control of the "listener envelopment" factor called LEV Listener envelopment ...LEV is the degree to which the reverberant sound, of the first main 2 wavefronts coming from the right and left speakers to the 2 ears directly but also indirectly from early and late reflections encounter themselves for each one of the ears and seems to surround the listener—to come from all directions, thanks to the active controls of the Helmholtz method...


This listener envelopment factor in relation with the source width factor (ASW) put you on the scene of the past recording live event and make you able to live anew the live event like the recording engineer choice of microphones and location choices of these same microphones make it possible, it is a specific perspective take on the real event created by the engineer because the real event CANNOT be reproduced exactly but could be recreated FROM this perspective if your room is well controlled...

The original event is not only in your room now, but you are actually there also....All recording are not on the same level of 3 dimensionnality it is the reason i choose this recording for a clear example....

With this example you will understand that nevermind the price an electronic design cannot make miracle in spite of the room lacks.... The room on the other hand CAN MAKE MIRACLE with any relatively good piece of gear able to do a decent job...

Gear are replaceable, rooms are not.....
Usual electronic design of dac or amplifier and even of speakers cannot replace the room nor compensate for the lack of controls in the room zone pressures and reflections....

We will need A.I. for that job....In the years coming tough...