>>There is not a single system that doesn't benefit from at minimum treating first reflections and a bass trap or two.<<
A system will benefit, but the room may not cooperate if its primary purpose is living in it. I'm completely supportive of the idea that music can be a first priority but audio might take a back seat to functional or aesthetic priorities of a primary living space. Put another way, I'm not replacing an original oil painting or a limited serigraph with a damping panel at a first reflection point, regardless of the sonic benefits. And bass traps present their own problems. I have yet to see one that's invisible, which is not the same as "hidden."
>>Audiophiles imo are lazy and want to buy cables, vibration, racks, points, paint, contact solution, green markets, etc and ignore the room too often. Like teflon dialetric is going to make a bigger difference than the room.<<
I can always hear these allegedly smaller influences through the room, regardless of the room compromises. The acoustic context and the electronic delivery chain have distinctly different influences and effects, and one can be improved without improving the other, to very good result, compared with doing nothing. There's a limit to everything. Does a $10,000 rack make sense? Not often and not for me, but somewhere there's an audiophile who thinks so and it's not because they're lazy. On the other hand, changing my turntable mounting made transformative improvements that no amount of room treatment can duplicate. These other electro-mechanical investments help in ways the room cannot.
>>In fact, I honestly don't think you can be a true audiophile without working to achieve basic room acoustics.<<
If by this you mean there is such a thing as an audiophile absent interest in music -- lover of sound for the sake of sound alone -- sure. Then I'm not an audiophile and neither are most people here. A musicophile who wants to have convincing sound through audiophile means can draw his or her own lines. By this definition, one can't be an audiophile without also committing to a dedicated listening room because anytime hifi is placed in open living spaces where living functions make audio considerations secondary, "basic room acoustics" will not be optimized. Putting audio absolutely first is the primary disease rendering hifi irrelevant and arcane to the larger population.
>>Phil's room in particular suffers from a small sound stage, lack of detail, and separation of instruments due to slap echo and lack of bass trapping that he mentions above.<<
I don't agree in this sense: My sound stage is as big as is appropriate for the room. Particularly since Def4s have been added, the soundstage is, when the music warrants, the full width of the acoustic space, and the full hieght, too. It shouldn't be bigger. It's not small compared to soundstaging in a smaller room. But it's not as large as a 25'x25' space either. In such a space, I hear some sound images as bigger than life, and I don't want that either. I hear no greater separation of instruments in similar treated room systems like yours, but then I have lots of experience listening through my room, so nothing to adjust to. I have yet to hear any detail on Keith's system that I can't hear on my own *though the presentation of detail is differrent* for many reasons, ranging from the space itself and placements, to sources and intermediate electronics. I've already said I don't think detail is under-represented in modern hifi -- it is mostly over-detailed, especially in digital. My system mitigates this in meaningful ways, and it's not the room doing it, but the system is more highly resolved in texture, finesse and tone.
>>Some day I will toss a few panels in the truck to take over and play with for a few hours....it will be an interesting experiment.<<
Let's see.
>>The difference in sound with and without will be similar in any room. That's because you can't cheat physics.<<
The actual sonic results are reduced in rectangular rooms. Physics of acoustics notwithstanding, just as measured results of gear don't anticipate how important a characteristic will be to perception of it, I've never heard a rectangular room go runaway, but I have often heard this in square or nearly-square proportion rooms. Our rooms don't sound as deviated from "flat" response as they are, and rectangular rooms are more forgiving of the physics violations, as we actually hear them. Guess what -- every performance you ever heard live was compromised acoutstically, too. And so was every recording. Ever been in an acoustically perfect recording studio? Ever been in one that is highly imperfect? Robert Johnson recorded in a hotel room and his musical influence continues to be cumulative. He sounds vivid and ultra-present on those deeply flawed recordings. Sun Records was far from an acoustically perfect studio. The realism captured in a legion of acoustically flawed studios before multi-tracking and out-of-control multi-mic'ing became the norm is stunning to hear against contemporary context.
Phil
