I'll take the contrary position in this discussion. Simply put, you can wish for higher end experience in a non-tuned room all you want, but it will very likely be impaired. While the equipment is fairly independent of the room, and you can move up in quality and enjoy the benefits, the room will still vastly influence the experience.
I enjoy aesthetics and decor, and in certain situations I might let the music suffer a bit if the overall life demands required it. But that would be an obvious second choice; I would much prefer to be able to have a perfect environment. That is why I eventually spent 8 months and thousands of dollars to build a proper listening room. It was so much more than worth it! The difference between the experience in that room versus the living room where I started out listening is radical. Not even close. Both the space and how it is treated make the listening room a far more amenable space for listening.
One has to go to extremes in speaker placement or in design of the speakers to avoid a lot of damage done by overly reflective surfaces, vaulted ceilings, etc. Duke's speakers may have a huge advantage in this repsect due to their implementation, especially if they are toed in quite a bit. (I will hasten to say that I like Duke's speakers a lot, as I've heard them at shows in less than ideal environments and they always sound very good! But his setup is hardly representative of the average audiophile's system.) But with a normal stereo you're going to have a lot of issues and failure to attain the ideal experience. Actually, technically, you'll have a lot of additional reverberation and uncontrolled reflectivity of waves if you are in a modern environment where "modern" means a lot of bare surfaces. In terms of attainment of the best sound it's not pretty.
Now, you can say, "Who gives a rip what anyone else says," but this is hardly influencing the actual quality of the sound. IF you really want the best sound then you need to take into consideration the room. It's that simple, and there's no way around it no matter how much you care to philosophize. I'm not an individual who says you can't have an immensely enjoyable time with audio if your room is not treated. However, it's simply poor advice (excepting specialized cases or radical placement to avoid reflections) to suggest it can be ignored in the pursuit of the best experience.
Some common sense things can be done with window treatments, pillows and stuffed furniture, large rugs on the floor, etc. But even still you will not be getting an ideal environment. I've not been impressed with room correction electronics as the ones I have heard result in an absolute degradation of the signal.
One has to be realistic about the room they are using. In terms of the environment I can't blame you for not wanting to turn your living area into a rug covered padded cell. But then you can hardly expect to be running 99 percentile sound with your gear either. :)
