Long ago I sold a decent system to a gent who lived in a Brownstone on Commonwealth Ave in Boston’s Back Bay. It was a spacious room with high coffered ceilings, a huge oriental carpet, was lined with walnut woodwork, well filled bookcases, overstuffed chairs, a baby grand piano… you get the picture. The system was a pair of KEF 104/2s and an NAD 7155 integrated receiver and matching CD player. The wiring was 16ga. zip cord, like from the hardware store. Patch cord was what came with the player. He was into opera. When I finished hooking it up the first disc he chose was a Georg Solti London set of something by Wagner with I think Nilsson singing soprano. I had heard these speakers in the store extensively and owned a pair myself but nothing prepared me for how amazing they sounded with no break in in this room. Completely convincing sound stage, tonally uncolored, seemingly unlimited dynamics.
so yeah, I guess the room matters…a lot.
Two audio components no one really talks about
1. The room
2. Your hearing
First the room. I have bookshelf speakers in the living room with a sub and I love the sound it all creates (won’t go into detail about specs, not the point here). It’s beautiful and I love it. Then I have a system in the basement and the sound is completely different. The living room gives an open and spacious sound and moving the same system to the basement gives it a focused and not spacious sound. The tones and detail is good just not as grand a sound as in the LR. Secondly, the sound was horrible in the basement until I put the speakers against the long wall. My point is the same system in two rooms sounds completely different and a choosing a different wall made a monumental difference but still can’t match an open room. I’m a Vandersteen owner (basement system) and i know all about speaker positioning and optimization. There has got to be diminishing returns on a sound system when your room is limited in what it can do with the acoustics.
Hearing. I recently had a hearing test and found I had hearing loss (a couple of decibels) in the mid frequencies (low and high were fine) and that it wasn’t due to age or damage but rather something I was born with. So what I hear and what you hear is different. I’m sure most of us have variations in our frequency responses. So when someone gives their endorsement on a amp or speaker or whatever, that sounds good to them and might not sound good to you. There is something to be said for tonal adjustments and for me in the 1kHz range. The point here is you need to decide what sounds good to you and you might not like that component someone swears is the best.
I’m always amazed and the amount of money people drop on systems and maybe they don’t need to spend that much money due to limitations mentioned above.
It’s not a fun topic but you have to admit there could be a lot you can do with the room to make the sound better. But maybe there is nothing you can do and no amount of money on equipment will change that.