High End System Building. How important is the matching, cabling and room? Thoughts ?

@gregm  with all due respect, the speakers-room interaction is a practical reality, scientifically proven - it is not a belief or "school of thought

I fully agree with your good post.

@calvinj,  I disagree with your dubious stance which appears, since your declaration that you are now affiliated with Infigo and own their cables, amps and DAC, that this is a thinly disguised sales pitch for the company Infigo. You also state that you are "pushing back at room, room, room.

It may be apparent to other readers that downplaying the importance of room acoustics (RA) and punting electronics as paramount, clearly reveals your motive which is to steer purchases towards components rather than absorbers.

All we have seen here is your stubborn refusal to acknowledge the importance of (RA) and relentlessly insist that properly designed electronics and speakers can overcome the damaging effects of RA.  This touting of high-end components being able to achieve a result beyond RA defies credulity. Sure, a better system in an untreated room will sound better, I don't think anybody is refuting that but you have failed to, knowingly or not, address the elephant in the room.

This elephant has much baggage, namely overly long decay and room modes. The damaging effect of strong early reflections should not be lightly dismissed, however the elephant turd is the peaks and nulls which are an unavoidable phenomenon of every room.

Now here is a point to ponder: leave out the peaks for this in the interest of not typing pages of info which I'm sure would just be summarily rejected.

Lets look at the nulls: yes you have nulls, without RA everyone does. Fact. Those pesky nulls are caused by waves meeting out of phase and cancelling. You OK with that so far? Good. It is a null so nothing there, no music nothing, it's like a black hole for select frequencies.  Now introduce your top of the line state of the art cables, DACs and amps and tell me how in any shape, manner or form they could magically know what musical info is missing and then somehow fill it in. 👽

The above will perhaps offer some slight glimmer of hope to enthusiasts without the budget to afford the very best in electronics that they do have a means of great sound if they embrace the room issue.

@benanders,

@mahgister,

@gregm,

All good advice and argument. To bolster my above comments regardless of the insistence of the OP to the contrary I firmly stand behind the premise that a lower budget system in a properly treated room and with the addition of a couple of subwoofers, still well under the @calvinj budget, will indeed hear a more realistic rendition of the event. Consider that the nasty peaks, which I avoided mentioning earlier are now smoothed and that these peaks previously at 15 to 20dB above the average is what causes the impression of 'slow bass' or 'boom' or 'one note bass'

Now with peaks tamed and nulls filled in the room's acoustic signature is removed and you are left with being transported to the venue 😎

You are seriously missing the mark if you think electronics can be designed to mitigate the damage room acoustics do to the sound. How can the designer know what size or shape room the amp will be used in?

Of course in an untreated room a collection of expensive gear will sound better than a budget system but I do have a treated room and 2 subs using Omnimic to optimise placement. The waterfall plot shows a smooth flat response and decaying within the RT60 recommended for the enclosed volume of my listening space.

If you have not heard a room treated properly as described then you are missing out. Measurement shows I need a little more bass trapping and that a third sub would further smooth out my already great result.

Looking at photo of your small room I can state with confidence that you will have huge peaks and dips which is not conducive to good sound. I mentioned above that nulls rob you of music, whatcha gonna do about that? Do not think that this can be corrected with EQ, pushing more power into a null achieves nothing, it will just cancel with the same power.

Have you measured your room? and if not, why not?