price points vs. room treatment

You get it! Nothing can sound great in a room that does not allow it to do what it is designed to do.

The thing is, it does nto require a huge cash outlay to address many of the basic room issues. $1000 (which is a lot of money) will go a long way to fixing a rooms annoying characteristics. It may not result in 'studio quality sound' but it's still a lot cheaper than a $2000-4000 pair of speakers.

As your system continues to grow, whatever you put into that room is going to continue to sound that much better. You might also be surprised how much better your current system sounds in a good room. Detail, soundstage, clarity, and frequency response can all be much improved. Some of these may be exagerated now, while others of them will be muted. Just fixing that will change the basic charateristics of the system.

If you are even a little handy there are a lot of things you can do yourself.

Another very important factor in your speaker/monitor equation is your choice of speaker stands. Stands are major extensions of your speaker. Putting a quality pair of monitors on poor stands is as bad as putting your speakers flush up against the wall, or actually putting them on bookshelves ( if you could find shelves that could support that weight). Many audiophools think they are saving money chosing the small speaker (monitor speaker) route, not taking into consideration the cost factor of excellent speaker stands. A great pair of monitors atop killer stands, with an acoustically minded room, can be shear audio nirvana. I have it. I could do better with some room treatments, however. I'm working on it. peace, warren

what does one do, then, if the room absolutely can not be treated and the speakers must be positioned as closely as possible to the wall behind it? must that mean one sacrifices sound and quality? is one forced to get a portless speaker and a sub? i have yet to hear a speaker that can perform exceptionally well in an untreated room and against the wall. any advice?

Mizrachi, It all depends on what you expect to achieve with your system. As a pratical matter, if you do not/cannot set your speakers up to their best advantage and compensate for you room's acoustics I wouldn't spend much money on my equipment or speakers - you will never hear it to its best advantage. If you value neutral tonality, you'll never hear it. If you value soundstaging you'll never hear it. If all you want is to hear music and are not interested in the stereo artifacts I would get some small floorstanders, place them against the wall where convenient and buy an equalizer to adjust the tonality to compensate for your preferences, sit back and enjoy.
Nrchy's comments are right on point. If you can bring your speakers out into the room away from the walls and treat the first reflection points as needed you can get excellent sonics from mid-priced components. Room treatment can be done at low cost using ordinary domestic stuff - furniture, rugs, plants, hangings, books/cases etc. If you want to use small speakers, use stands, to bring the speakers up to ear level, but you don't need to spend big bucks here either unless you have high quality components and an excellent room that will allow you to hear the difference.

True, room treatments will have significant influences on your system. The most important speaker factor, way before room acoustics, is their positioning. If you didn't do a thing to treat your room, but could position your speakers perfectly, you'd be way ahead, rather than an acoustically perfect room with speakers flush against the wall, or the like. Placement AND room tweaks/treatments? Audio Nirvana. Or, the inherent maximum from your system. Newbee and Nrchy speak zee truth.