"The room can totally wreck, or make, a system"

Room treatment is my second most expensive component. 

40 hz null pretty tough to deal with

90 hz peak, I would look into a trap(s) tuned for 90 hz

Peaks are far worse to listen to than nulls and often easier to fix.

Design, including how the space is built, solid, laid out well, etc do the best you can then work around the other uses of the space. This will determine where the speakers are going to be generally located so pretty easy to sort out where the main treatments will be needed the most. The better the design of the space, the easier everything else will be.

If a room is to far compromised then all the treatments one could do might not be enough. I have listened to very high end systems I had to walk away from they sounded so bad yet I have enjoyed simple but well sorted systems what were a joy to listen to.

--

I live in a concrete apartment and listen in my living room. There’s nothing I can do about the very strong peak  at 90 hz and complete null at 40 hz. The Fabfilter pro-Q3 I could use for the 90 hz in Audirvāna is far from transparent.

A lot of good and varied responses / real experiences regarding room and how significant it is (generally speaking).  It is a complex subject matter and one really important piece to this is context and goals - which always seem to be overlooked in these discussions.

You have a living room and shared space with wife, kids etc.. that presents a completely different set of "goals" and application than a dedicated space with free reign so to speak. 

Obviously the latter gives one the ability to do whatever they want to address the room, which in most, if not all cases is significant. From addressing basic first reflections to a full blown acoustic study and build. 

A shared space in most cases will pose significant limitations on addressing the room, which is totally understandable and one works within whatever limitations - be it shared space or dedicated space.  Both situations require different approaches.  

Can you get a good sound out of a shared space relying solely on spkr setup, sure!

Put that same rig in a room with the proper application of treatment, it will most certainly be a completely different sounding and engaging system > for the better without question.

Room size and shape add another entire set of variables to an already complex subject.  Again, whats your goals, $$, and aesthetic requirements. 

It ranges from plop down sprks and good enough to wanting to get the very most out of ones rig - most of the time, it starts with the room - it's a fundamental piece to your rig hands down - at least IMHO.

Personally, I don’t spend on upgrades unless there is an acoustic reason. Otherwise, the money is wasted. I agree that all rooms need acoustic control because the room and system are inextricably linked.

As for brand names, I am going to disagree a little bit. While some market products by taking advantage of the narcissistic consumer, I think some designers understand acoustics. After all, acoustics is part of a division of engineering, and engineers build audio equipment. Not every brand markets only on the assumption that their customers don’t understand acoustics -- or don’t want to. This forum is filled with consumers who care about acoustics. And, we could list many audio brands whose designers understand acoustics.

That does not mean that these engineers always try to solve the room for the listener -- but there is more than one speaker manufacturer out there that tries to offer placement advice to their customers, right?

And then there are the engineers who design acoustic treatments and offer guidance (such as GIK). Those are "brands" that use their knowledge of acoustics to help customers.

"In my experience, an optimally controlled, low-cost system in a room designed for it will generally outperform a more expensive, out-of-the-box system in a typical living room."

Agreed. But I also think you are on very correct ground to claim that a $1000 system in a great room can beat a $100,000 system in a bad room. That is how much we agree that the room is important.

For 2 years 7day/7 without a day without doing acoustic experiments because i am retired i learned :

it may cost nothing to fix your system/room.

It ask for a great amount of listening experimenting time.

Generally the most expanse on upgrades someone do the less he understand acoustics.It is easy to verify this rule reading threads.

All room need acoustics controls (not just passive treatment) why ?

Because the room is linked to a system as a system is linked to the room, but the sound quality pertain to neither of them... Why?

Because save if you invest a fortune creating an acoustic architectural optimal design for every ears, the sound quality depend ,not so much on the room ,the gear system, but mainly in your hearing specific characteristics and training abilities to CONTROL the system room to your liking...

i designed 2 dedicated acoustic rooms with "scrap" materials on hand...

I even created "a mechanical equalizer" using set of "specifically" distributed Helmholtz resonators...

the sound quality was astounding for the price paid for my gear and holographic immersive with some recording so well made it was as if i was with the musicians...

Acoustics rule audio....

No branded gear name but acoustics....

Give me anything i will made it "relatively" good....Acoustics rule...

I must add that i improve all my headphones too. as i did with my gear with resonance controls.

An optimally  controlled low cost system in a controlled room designed for it  will be better in my book than almost  anything  pricier out of the box in a living room .( it is a general rule. I dont claim that a 1000 bucks system beat a 100000 bucks one, use common sense. )

The environment is always the first thing to fix, better yet design, correctly and then use room treatments.

Then it comes to placement of all the gear and furnishings, speaker placement most critical.

Why is this the order? I would have supposed that speaker placement comes first because otherwise, how would one know where the first reflection point (and others) are? 

I thought the way to do it was to put speakers first. Happy to be corrected.

I am a 2-channel person first and foremost but getting the RAAL VM-1a tube amp and the RAAL SR1a earphones gave me 2-channel minus the room. It is an incredible listen and each night when I turn my 2-channel systems off and put the earphones on for late night work, I do not feel I degraded the listening experience. With all other phones it was not as good because of my 2-channel bias.

I have purchased the VM-1a amp and Sr1a 2x now. I sold it thinking I would do something else, and it was a big mistake.

Today, the SR1a can be run on low powered 2-channel amps unlike the past where you needed 100+ watts. I also use my used $400 20-watt Schitt Aegir v1 as a secondary driver for the SR1a. 

The environment is always the first thing to fix, better yet design, correctly and then use room treatments.

Then it comes to placement of all the gear and furnishings, speaker placement most critical.

If the above are truly optimized then there should  be little or no need to equalize

If one must then always best to reduce levels next to dips, not add to the dips.

Next up is equipment, last on the list.

I have set up outstanding high end systems in a properly setup environment then dialed it all in, swapped to a system costing 10% and it was still dang fine and better than most super high end systems I have ever heard.

Rick

I could've saved a lot of money through the years on equipment if I would've spent time/money on room treatment in the beginning.

@mashif Understood and agree.

This is why it is so difficult to get new entrants into this hobby; we keep making it more complicated (and expensive) for newbies to put together a system (including room) that is acceptable to 'us" and not subject to outright ridicule and scorn.

I have no idea what this means. We are having a discussion. If some of it goes above a new entrants' head, well that's not our responsibility. This is not a textbook or a "how to" blog. If some new person needs an explanation, they can ask for it. They're not children.

@hilde45 

I totally agree about a good sounding room. That's what good mixing rooms are. 

Studio recordings may or may not feature the acoustic space of the original recording. But the artist/producer/engineer work hard to create the space they want the music to be in. They want you to hear that too. A studio is not some sterile space. Most artists want to feel the emotion of the music in the studio and the closer your room is to a studio environment, the more you hear what was intended. 

Of course, every great studio sounds different so I'm not suggesting there's some standard. You create the room you like. But not intentionally creating a good sounding room limits your ability to hear the recording as it was intended. 

This is why it is so difficult to get new entrants into this hobby; we keep making it more complicated (and expensive) for newbies to put together a system (including room) that is acceptable to 'us" and not subject to outright ridicule and scorn.

All rooms have acoustics and each is different.

If you want to hear what your gear sounds like without room acoustics set your speakers up outside.

Years ago I set up my Ohm Walsh speakers cranking off a Tandberg tr2080 receiver outside on a porch of a rural Kentucky farmhouse for an outside party. Wowsa!!!! THe best sound I ever got out of system up to that time by a longshot even 40 yards away. Crazy Horse and others were jamming like live both loud and clear!.

@mashif

Sure, live music occurs in an acoustic space and that’s an important part of the original sound. But a good recording captures that sound and that’s what I want to hear. An untreated, live room distorts the sound in the recording by adding sound that wasn’t part of the original performance. No different than noise.

A room needs both diffusion and absorption for different reasons. But the net effect of good treatment is reducing the sound of the room and allowing you to hear the recording without added noise, which is what reflections are. Noise that wasn’t contained in the original recording.

You’ve made a great case for a pair of headphones or near-field listening.

Your argument doesn't seem to extend to studio recordings, does it?  If I'm listening to Aja by Steely Dan, which is mixed to the nth degree, what kind of "room acoustics" are in there? Or EDM? It is up to my gear and my room to provide a canvas for that sound. The canvas can be good (well treated room) or bad.

For some reason, when I’ve treated my room and gotten the frequency curve and reflections where I want them, the music sound full, well placed in the sound stage, and relaxed. When I sit near-field or put on headphones, I feel suffocated.

No, there’s a difference between a good sounding, properly treated room that is not just about "adding noise." It is adding naturalness, the physiologically-based experience which was described before. If this was not true, most people on this forum would just be wearing headphones or would have formed a hobby around collectively bad taste.

I've spent the bulk of my audiodefiled past attempting to counter spaces that defied reasonable attempts to 'cure issues' with varied results.  Since most were rented, anything beyond the 'not all that simple' quick tricks (toe in/out, space between/from back wall, height, tilt, etc.) would yield varied degrees of satisfaction or just relative tolerance of the situation.

In the 2 'owned' spaces, what imho and ears did the better outcome was room eq to the best attainable of FLAT, tweaked to taste.

Back in the '80's, an Audio Control eq with it's dinky calibrated mic and much darting around with the latter managed to get a handle on the response.

Later, my 1st Behringer eq which came with DRC and 100 memories with its' mic made the process less of a hurdle; L, R. and L+R allowed one to tame the tones and blend a mem setting or blur a pair together...improved but still a tad short in a world of random room profiles ... *laugh* ....

I now own 2 of them, and a 2nd matching mic is pending shortly....

That, REW, tone generators, sndpeek, and a raft of other online apps and display types allows analysis side by sides....but currently in yet again...not mine....ours.

Room Rodeo Response : Ignore the room, concentrate on the field within....
...and don't go all Dolby over it.... ;)

Rest of the time I just enjoy wherever the current plateau I'm at...

But, given the situation to do such, I'd still restart with the space first, knowing what i've read here and thereabouts..

Thanks, y'all. 👍

No room can make a system but can definitely break it.

As some others stated, let's not exaggerate the issue, as important as it is.

There is no substitute for great equipment.

And, yes, you can do a lot with rugs, books, furniture. It won't be ideal, but it should also be a living space for most of us, even if it is a dedicated listening room.

Equalization and room correction software can only change what a speaker puts into the room, they can't do anything for what the room puts out in reflections and  reverberation.

Acoustical treatments are easy to do, and easy to overdo. I agree that an untreated room can never be right. Home theaters are different beasts than 2-Channel listening rooms, but to a point they can effectively share treatments. Case in point is Acoustimac's Home Theater Room Package I for $848 you get 6 2X4 2" panels covered in your choice of fabric,or upcharge for artwork plus 4 48X24 4" bass traps, likewise covered. Add to that a couple diffusers and the improvement in most listening rooms up to 200 or so sq ft is dramatic.

Because of the room layout, I couldn't use an off the shelf package In our living room, so I had them make up 16 - 2X2 2" panels in ceiling white - they are practically invisible, but made a very bright room usable, if not great (lots of glass, no drapes)

In our theater, I went with a darker grey (light control - it's a theater)  ceiling panels and using a combination of white 12X48 and black 12X36 2" panels I made a 5ft wide 'keyboard' wall hanging that my gets lots of positive comments, and is very effective. I used 2X4 construction offcuts to make a 16X48 diffuser  using the BBC staggering for the lengths (Warning- it weighs a ton!) for the back wall.  

All in, I spent under $2K plus about $500 in hired labor to install the ceiling panels. I am very pleased with the acoustical result and the SAF is very high. Money very well spent.

@grannyring  Looking forward to you hearing my room soon.

I have not posted a sweep of the totally untreated room, just the partially treated room (first reflections at sides and on the ceiling slopes)[orange line]. Regardless, having a room almost perfect wrt the Fibonacci preferred ratio (10x17x23) it still needed some serious bass trapping. Just a taste of what treatments can do to improve the room response.

https://www.audiogon.com/systems/10635#&gid=1&pid=9 

Today I have all 4 corners heavily trapped. The rear corner traps hide behind the Real Traps Near Diffusors (half diffusor/half trap). Those hidden traps are solid triangles of OC703 (your friend!) stacked behind the Real Traps units.

Good advice abounds here. Too much absorption gives you a dead and boring room. Some of us who built HT's found out they suck for 2 channel!

@hilde45 

I understand that in the real world people are used to listening to their rather live rooms and it might sound strange in a treated room. But once your brain tunes into the sound emanating from the speakers you start hearing the room the music was created in, or at least the ambient space that was created in the mix. 

Sure, live music occurs in an acoustic space and that's an important part of the original sound. But a good recording captures that sound and that's what I want to hear. An untreated, live room distorts the sound in the recording  by adding sound that wasn't part of the original performance. No different than noise. 

A room needs both diffusion and absorption for different reasons. But the net effect of good treatment is reducing the sound of the room and allowing you to hear the recording without added noise, which is what reflections are. Noise that wasn't contained in the original recording. 

A good recording studio isn't anechoic but rather a place where music sound fabulous. Spend some time in one and see. 

 @decooney 

I hate listening on headphones. My point is that people who do like them don't complain about the absence of room sound. They like hearing the actual sound of the recording, not the sound of the room they're in. 

"Research proved that in a live musical environment, approximately 30% of what we hear is direct sound while 70% is reflected from walls, ceilings and floors and only reaches our ears a few milliseconds after the direct sound. The human brain uses direct sound for identification and to calculate location, but uses reflected sound to determine musicality and spaciousness, as well as direction."

Right — and this is why a deadened room sounds "weird." 

I appreciate the pushback on the way I phrased the OP. I think it is possible to have good rooms if mid or nearfield listening is possible. That said, the space I was setting up in was going to be near to midfield and it needed help. 

At first, I way over treated it. I got a lot of panels for free from someone local -- bass traps, absorbers of different kinds, a couple diffusers. Put too much in and took a lot out — but not the bass traps nor the absorbers on my 6.5ft ceiling. Things were not right so I got a bunch of diffusers and they did the trick.

One last point. Many of these acoustic companies will offer to study your room and come up with 2 or 3 price options. I notice these plans all but wallpaper walls and ceiling with a great number of panels. I question this approach. Start slow and test with a few treatments and go in steps! 

@onhwy61 your post is certainly true and reasonable. My experience mirrors what you stated. I have had massively to minimally treated rooms throughout the decades. I managed to get all the systems to sound very engaging and enjoyable. Natural wool rug in front of the speakers, more nearfield listening combined with speakers that work well with aggressive toe-in minimizing the room’s impact. Getting acoustic treatments right in a given room can be difficult. One of my highly treated rooms would always sound flat and a tad dull. I learned to use more diffusion and thicker broad spectrum absorption panels to avoid that result.

Furniture combined with book cases and such can certainly help acoustics if well thought out. Some of my listening spaces were in a shared living room making the use of acoustic treatments near impossible! 🙁.

Finally, I have a good audio friend that paid one of the acoustic companies mentioned in this thread many thousands to treat his room. He ended up having them remove most of it in the end. He felt the system lost life and vibrancy. I suppose some of this can be subjective in terms of sonic result. It seems everything in audio including acoustic panel types, placement and number, is also subjective.  Nevertheless, if at all possible acoustic room treatments should be employed, but realize it takes time and effort to do it your liking and preference.  
 

I think the title to this thread overstates the issue.  Obviously the room is very important, but it's only a make or break situation if the listener makes seriously unwise choices in loudspeakers.  It involves trade-offs.  If you want full range and loud you will need to utilize acoustical treatments.  If you only listen at moderate levels and you're willing to sacrifice some deep bass, then you'll need less treatments, if any.  Additionally, if you set up a true near field arrangement you can greatly reduce the need for acoustic treatments.  Plus, there are loudspeakers that are actually designed to control and/or reduce room interactions.  Gradient, Snell, Klipsch, Kii, Lyngdorf and others have some interesting designs.  It's more subtle than the thread title indicates.

My reference recordings are of acoustic instruments in reverberant space… mostly churches… The first distortion is… microphone selection… 

Not every reverberant space created equal… indeed listening seat… 

Room treatment for speakers is a science and black art…often overdone in those sterile audiophile rooms… don’t get me started by the tank trap forest of amplifiers blocking the TT on a massive rack planted between the speakers….

Don’t neglect diffusion… my favorite are from Arnold at Core Audio Designs… 

Research proved that in a live musical environment, approximately 30% of what we hear is direct sound while 70% is reflected from walls, ceilings and floors and only reaches our ears a few milliseconds after the direct sound. The human brain uses direct sound for identification and to calculate location, but uses reflected sound to determine musicality and spaciousness, as well as direction.

My background is in recording studios and I couldn’t imagine trying to put a system together without first doing basic room treatment. Between standing waves and reverb time, I would find it impossible to evaluate gear.

Agreed.

I disagree about hearing the room. +1 @cleeds

A listening room is not a mixing studio. The reason is that "what it’s like" to hear music is to hear it in a room. When speakers play, the whole room is engaged, physically. The fact that this sounds different than headphones or a deadened room is worth it because as live creatures hearing things in a space is part of what it’s like to hear anything. This is why it’s nice to hear singers in a church.

There was another post about Rooms today:

There is no room that is acoustically correct without treatments. Rugs and drapes are not very good and could actually make your room to dead. You need a mix of absorption and diffusion. All corners will accumulate bass, this can be wall corners, soffit corners. Then there are 1st reflection points: in front of speakers on the floor, ceiling, side and the 1st reflection point for the opposite speaker.

The room is 1 of the most important pieces of an audio system

mashif

Some people worry about a room being too "dead" but why would you want to hear anything that isn't from the source?

All rooms have a "sound." The only way to avoid that is to listen in an anechoic chamber. If you've ever been in an anechoic space, you know that it is extremely uncomfortable and certainly not ideal for a listening or living space. So yes, a room can be too "dead."

mashie ...Consider that headphones eliminate the room so there’s little reason to want to hear the room.

There you go, plug in to your nice headphone amp, one and done. All music.  

My background is in recording studios and I couldn't imagine trying to put a system together without first doing basic room treatment. Between standing waves and reverb time, I would find it impossible to evaluate gear. It's a somewhat trial and error process but there are some basic things any room should have. 

Some rooms may have a fortuitous layout with slanted ceilings or non parallel walls that provide a good foundation. But they can hugely benefit from some well placed absorbing panels to reduce reverb time. Without that there will always be smearing and lack of focus. 

Some people worry about a room being too "dead" but why would you want to hear anything that isn't from the source? The ambience you want to hear is embedded in the recording. The sound of your room only detracts from that. Consider that headphones eliminate the room so there's little reason to want to hear the room. 

Room EQ Wizard is indeed your friend worth getting to know.

You can do more harm than good however, if you don’t know what you are doing, or just put some things in the room, thinking it will make an improvement.

More harm than good...depends. Some rooms are really bad to begin with, and almost anything (properly placed) will help. But generally I agree.

And learning REW -- https://www.roomeqwizard.com/ --and buying one $100 Umik gets you on the way.

Read about REW. Watch a couple videos. Learn what you’re trying to address first. Then buy conservatively what you probably need (look locally first) and then add incrementally, measuring all the while. This is how you establish a correlation between what you hear and what the measurements show. Repeat as needed.

As you all of stated, room treatment is critical. Probably the most important part of your system. You can do more harm than good however, if you don't know what you are doing, or just put some things in the room, thinking it will make an improvement. I had treated my room in a manner that I thought made sense, treating obvious reflection points, etc. However, the cheap products I used were far too thin to trap anything but high frequency and I didn't have near enough bass absorption. I also had too much absorption and not enough diffusion in spots. 

I re-did things with professional advice from GIK and their free consulting/room design service. It is an excellent service and free of charge, but of course they hope you will end up using their products. I did, and the results were 100% better. GIK is excellent and there are many other great products on the market. Spend the money and do it the RIGHT way. 

Too bad all speakers aren't as easy as Ohm. You tell them the room volume and they give you the appropriate speaker.

I'd rather start with room friendly speakers. From what I hear, 1st order like Thiel are the worst. Even my B & W with steep x-over got bad room reflections when volume was turned up. Sound became confused and muddled.

The worst part about a bad room is how it will constantly send an audiophile into a consumer merry-go-round.  Constantly trying to improve the sound with better speakers/cables/etc.

I sang this song here for many years. :)

The sound quality result not from the room or the systems but from the relation between specifics ears/brain, specifics system parts and speakers, specifics room (including the material acoustic content of the room and his geometry,size and topology). it result from vibrations controls and from Electrical noise floor control...

The rest is useless upgrade when we reach an optimal purchase point for our budget.

Best $500 dollars that I ever spent was DIYing a case of 703 Owen’s-Corning rigid fiberglass panels. 

Hear hear. I did that right away for my 6.5 foot ceiling. Made the room usable.

I would add this. “A person’s hearing ability can totally wreck or make their audio system “. My gut feeling tells me that many audiophiles having hearing deficiencies but don’t correct them. 

My gut feeling is that an audiophile that doesn't correct their room, barring a spouse that defies them, has a brain deficiency not a hearing deficiency. Or, they are audiophiles that don't seek the best sound — an oxymoron. Even folks with hearing problems can hear a huge percentage of what is there. Hans B. has covered this.

I upgraded my AVR and it came with Addyssey room equalization software. It was a hallelujah moment.

I've encountered too many purists who won't go for room correction. I use it for my subs and it solved the issue. I'd rather have good sound with room correction than do nothing! (And there's some good room correction gear out there, such as Lyngdorf.)

So many people are let down after laying out big bucks for what they thought was the speaker of their dreams once the honeymoon period of new ownership fades and the true critical listening begins…

It certainly is good for reviewers who can say "Best speaker ever" to people who really just have a room problem but want to buy their way out of their problem.

One of the problems is the “Speaker Merry Go Round”. If you don’t address the room’s issues or without having a speaker built specifically for you and your room’s needs basically you’re just purchasing, no matter who the manufacturer is, an “Off The Rack Speaker”, that sure sounds great in their sound chambers, has all the right specs, etc., but probably will only sound so good in your room.
So many people are let down after laying out big bucks for what they thought was the speaker of their dreams once the honeymoon period of new ownership fades and the true critical listening begins, that’s when you begin to hear the speaker’s shortcomings, usually happening after the allotted return window expires… LOL… Really not Funny. 🤦‍♂️ Now you’re stuck trying to unload, usually at a loss, what you thought were your “End Game” Speakers on the various forums or even to TMR and buying another ticket for a ride on the Merry Go Round again. 

The fix is certainly Fixing the Room, Utilizing DSD or both.

Best advice ever… FIGURE THE ROOM OUT AND DETERMINE WHAT NEEDS CORRECTION and now you know how to proceed. 

I built a new house during the pandemic and the new listening room was unlistenable. I pretty much abandoned listening to music and really struggled hearing TV. We’ve been using captions to understand the dialog. 

Then 6 months ago I upgraded my AVR and it came with Addyssey room equalization software. It was a hallelujah moment. Just like that it was magic. It was so good i upgraded the Dirac Live full bandwidth with Base Control with a good studio microphone and it is pure joy. If you have an unmanageable room, you might want to look into a quality room equalization solution. It worked for us. 

I would add this. “A person’s hearing ability can totally wreck or make their audio system “. My gut feeling tells me that many audiophiles having hearing deficiencies but don’t correct them. 

I agree. Last year I bought GIK diffusers, absorbers, and corner bass traps. Made a huge difference in the performance of my system.

Best $500 dollars that I ever spent was DIYing a case of 703 Owen’s-Corning rigid fiberglass panels. 

I agree 100%. I've had a system in a number of different room sizes, shapes, ceiling heights, etc over the many years that I've been involved in this hobby. In some locations, I could hear the issues. Wasn't smart enough to do room treatment.

My son is a musician and has recorded in a studio and done his own recordings. He's way more knowledgable about the techie end of those things. He was absolutely convinced that I would benefit from room equalization, so I downloaded a trial version of Dirac Live and bought a recommended mic. He measured my room and we found that it actually measured pretty flat.  We tried the room equalization and didn't like what it did. It seemed to flatten the sound. 

At one point, we had the mic near the sitting position and we were getting a spike in the graph (I can't remember if it was a spike or a dip). It was weird. I had my laptop on the coffee table in front of me. I closed the laptop and the spike/dip went away. Pretty surprising because the mic was quite a bit higher than the laptop. 

I'm sure I could benefit from room treatment, but I'd need to get someone knowledgeable to help me figure it out. 

@baylinor Thanks for affirming. Danny's video is not the best of these sorts of things, but it's recent. He has some good ideas about how to do it on the cheap just to start out and see what difference it makes.

I'm posting it because this lesson (of the room's importance) was so helpful in keeping me from going down rabbit holes about this or that amp, speaker, etc. I suppose part of the hobby's fun is just being oblivious to the room's contribution and then chasing gear, arguing about how it sounds, and never quite getting one's bearings. Then again, there are many people posting who are dying to "get off the constant cycle of buying and selling gear, chasing Nirvana." It's pretty clear you can't find your way out of the forest without a compass. Learning my room became my compass.

Preaching to the choir. In my case anyway. For anyone who thinks they have as good a system as can be regardless of cost in an untreated room, pay attention to what hilde45 posted. I only listened to 2/3 of it because I already experienced all of it. A properly built and treated room will get you to a higher level of audio nirvana that you ever thought possible. Equipment alone will only get you a fraction of that.