@noromance
@mahgister
Thanks folks. I try to address each area the best I can. The room was existing, so I could not rebuild it as it is the only room over the garage and exposed to the elements on 3 sides.
My take is audiophiles must consider all of these:
Great gear - have that now with minor hiccups and expense. Not the most expensive, but we all know you don't have to break the bank to get great sound.
Room dimensions and construction - was dictated to me but I focused on acoustics within the space. Added a feature wall, a pony wall with sliding door with MLV in it, and laminate flooring that makes me happy..
Speaker and listener position set-up - dialed in using 3 different methodologies all converging on the same general positions/relationships dimensionally. So that "validates" what I hear versus what the pro's have recommended.
Room tuning - spent an enormous amount of time on this between high frequencies, bass trapping, bounce, reflection points, and general ambience and broad sound stage applying some diffusion as well. I almost overdamped it in the pursuit of taming the bass so dialed up the diffusion to bring back the ambience.
Commensurate cabling that extracts the best from the gear - almost 3 years of serious cable buying and selling to find the right match to my gear. It was fun, expensive, and at times, exhausting.
Electronic noise reduction (black background) - every tweak I could muster that made sense to me without robbing the sound (passive devices)
The best recordings (some redbook is great, some is not so great, for instance) - personal preferences I suppose. I find DSD to be too sterile but 96 or 192 to be funner.
