Room treatment and speaker placement????

Just poking around on audio sites and system pics, personal, not dealer. I've seen many systems that are far nicer than mine, set up without any visible, or at best, minimal room treatment.

I don't get it. If you have the money for nice gear, or even modest gear, why not squeeze the best you can out of it for not much money?

Recently did a fairly extensive treatment of my own room and I can honestly say that it was by far the best bang-for-the-buck I ever spent in audio. By the time I was finished, or at least close, I still have a couple more things to do, I barely recognized the sound of my own system and music......it was that different.

Everything got substantially better. Bass is deeper, cleaner and tighter. Sound stage with good recordings, stretches wall to wall and realistically deep behind the speakers. Imaging is tight and well defined, vocals are clearer.............The speakers tend to simply disappear in most cases......It's all just BETTER and I didn't have to strain my ears to hear it, it was obvious.

The only down side I have noted is that you can easily hear the differences in recording quality between discs now. As a result, while most music is much better, lesser recordings can be a bit disappointing.

My other question concerns setup and speaker positioning.......Judging strictly from a picture or two, it would appear that many speakers are far from optimally set up...............Without knowing the whole room, I could be mistaken. It would seem that although many people enjoy the hobby and have spent significant money on the equipment, they don't actually understand acoustics.............how important setup and treatment can be.

If you fall into that category, do yourself a huge favor and spend a few hours researching the above.

So many folks will spend hours arguing over cables, stands, pods, points, pads, wood, metal, glass.....the list of tweaks is near endless. Set your gear up right, make an attempt to correct at least some of your room problems....... ALL rooms have problems........... and you'll walk around smiling for days..........Tain't magic folks or even particularly complicated......and it's guaranteed to work.

Neither an engineer or acoustics expert, just a hobbyist that reads a lot.

Room treatment, a few hundred bucks. Proper speaker set up............free, just a little of your time........Best "tweaks" you'll ever make.