If you have a nice system why do you really need room treatments?


Yeah you may need an absorption panel if your room is completely open, ie. No rug or furniture, ie just lonely single chair. But if your system can't cut it in any room then it's a system problem and you should be able to discern a good system regardless of the room.  Unless you put it on the roof of your apartment building but the Beatles seemed to have survived that effort

I think people go nuts with all this absorption acoustical room treatment stuff and it looks kind of awful.  Once in a while you see a really cool looking diffuser panel and I would definitely want one. But to have a system that works really well without any of the acoustical panel distractions is a wonderful thing.

emergingsoul

@emergingsoul , Thank You for the complements. But that did not help, because seeing makes a difference and helps understand better, at least for me. And you did not mention anything about your room size, treatments, etc.

I do have Carpenters and Van Morrison albums. A couple of years ago, Spotify surprised me at the end of the year, by letting me know that I listened to 58 different genres of music. And all that time I thought I was focused on only 10-12 at the max.

@milpai

Big fan of Karen Carpenter, especially a live concert from 1974 performed in Japan. Remarkably entertaining and sound quality is pretty darn good. Video is called carpenters Live at budokan 1974 one hour and seven minutes, has some pre-concert footage too which is interesting. She was doing like 150 performances a year and overworked very sad situation

Treatments consist of corner base traps extending up to the ceiling, a couple absorption panels throughout the room, a 20 x 20 thick wool rug and an assortment of furniture. Not much more I can do with the room other than throw some panels on the ceiling which is 8 feet high, room size of 20 x 18. My system includes A McIntosh MC 901, Conrad Johnsen gat2 preamplifier, a lumin x one streamer dac, BMW speaker from 800 series and transparent speaker cables and interconnects. network switch from english eight, a nad av processor and a five channel mcIntosh solid state amplifier for centre and rear speakers.

Thanks for the details @emergingsoul . I was under the impression that you did not have any panels and had set up your system in such a way that it sounds amazing, as-is. I was trying to understand the context of your post.

I think however good the equipment is, the room physics will always play into the equation. Even with golden ration room, there have to be some nulls. So a room without acoustical treatment would be wonderful, if you can adjust to the fact that you can have less than ideal sound.

BTW, you do have a nice sized room and some very good equipment.

Ops Opening thread post:

"I think people go nuts with all this absorption acoustical room treatment stuff and it looks kind of awful. ..... But to have a system that works really well without any of the acoustical panel distractions is a wonderful thing."

Response to milpai:

"Treatments consist of corner base traps extending up to the ceiling, a couple absorption panels throughout the room,"

 

Anyone surprised?