Room Too Dead

Room too dead?  No such thing.  

All those who are suggesting that the room needs to be lively miss the point completely. The need is to reproduce exactly what is recorded, not what is distorted by room interaction. A dead room does NOT interfere with the signal coming from the speakers. A live room distorts the signals by creating echoes and resonances that change the tonal balance and the sound coming from the driver surfaces.

Using near field speakers and sitting a couple of feet away from the speakers eliminates almost all the room effect. That’s the real beauty of that kind of design.

It's not hard to remove the room from the reproduced music.  Just fill the room with artificial ficus trees, 5' to 6' in height.  They are excellent diffusers and are inexpensive when compared to "audiophile" room solutions.  

@soix 

"Maybe all music venues should be lined with wool so there are no reflections whatsoever.  That sounds fun! "

If the sound of the original venue is on the recording, then that is part of the performance.  But distortion, reflections and/or noise from the listening room should NOT be part of the playback.  That's NOT on the recording.  

The recreation of an orchestra performance includes the venue in which it was recorded.  In addition to the musical instruments, I want to hear the symphony halls in Vienna, New York, London, Cleveland, Philadelphia, St. Louis and elsewhere.  That does NOT include my listening room.  

@soix 

It's OK for you to be wrong.  We're used to it.  If you like that kind of distortion, so be it.  

There have been plenty of other "tests" that contradict your comment.  In one case, playback of a recording in Powell Hall of a SLSO recording was "wrong" because it excited the hall's acoustics.  Played back in a dead room fixed the problem.  I know first-hand of the results because I was there.