About users with hidden agendas

agree with @oldhvymec 100%

experienced hifi enthusiasts can look at pictures of a system setup in room and can spot issues quickly, there are elements of good and bad in room set up can be violated, but always at the cost of getting the best possible sound

not a substitute for being there, but photos can be very very informative as a lead in, and lead to numerous relevant and good suggestions or ideas of how improvements might be gotten

Being a pro and being able to spot about some problem in a system/room when looking at it , does not means that anybody can judge the S.Q. of a system from a photo...

The reason is simple : acoustic treatment and control are not ALWAYS predictible by visible cues...empty tubes of different kind, one hundred perhaps, of different size are not pretty to look at...it is the "bones"of my mechanical equalizer" though...

For example the number of acoustic devices and their precise size and location is not something COMPLETELY visually meaningful... It is related in a specific way in its tuning to some specific gear for some specific ears...

Then the fact that a pro can point to a room problem on an image is one thing but the final S.Q. result must be LISTENED TO...

Sorry...

Then if someone look to my silly room photo , in no way he can affirm that my S.Q. is pure shit because my room look silly... And it is silly room , my room is a laboratory made with discarded materials then at no cost......

Audio is not guess based on price tag, and image...

For sure some audiophile whose acoustic big room are created by pro at high cost and esthetically beautiful scream a S.Q. quality from image that will make my SMALL laboratory room pure junkyard sound...

But my room is not pure shit in S.Q... Sorry.... Appearance can help : Mike Lavigne room scream high quality sound from photo... That does not mean that my silly mad scientist room is shit even compared to him ...Way less good for sure but not shit...

How do i know? Simple because i enjoy quality music filling my room with a relatively natural timbre ... And my ratio S.Q. /price beat Mike Lavigne big.... My system value is 500 bucks... Beat me naysayers who look at photo to judge me...

Just an exemple now to indicate how it is easy to be wrong:

I used reflective metal junk device who will be judge to have "negative" effect by any pro...This is not untrue...But this is not right too...

how could they be wrong?

Because i tuned my room using some % of reflective surface from certain spot that are meaningless if you dont listen the room tuning process at the end and only look at cheap empty aluminium cauldron linked together...

I dont recommend people to use cheap cauldron to tune a room, i recommend them to use some reflective surface for positive effect in the tuning process...Do you undersatand the difference...I had ZERO budget to achieve my goal and i am very proud of that...

@oldhvymec I am glad that pictures work for you.

IMHO making decisions or even believing that you can judge a room’s sound acoustic signature by a picture is nonsense. Clearly, I am talking about rooms that properly arranged and not with armchairs or refrigerators in-front of speakers, turntables set up in flimsy tilted racks, or running machining tools in the room, with everything plugged in a power strip that was meant to be used to power Christmas lights. If this is what you are suggesting then I would, to some extent, agree that you can provide some feedback.

But then you have @mahgister ‘s room and system that looks like a mad scientist, who he is 😊, lab/room in search of the ultimate solution; and by looking at the pictures arrive to the wrong conclusion because one has not listened to the room and his style different different to ours. BTW @mahgister your room looks like my office and labs, all kinds of things that for most of the uneducated are trash, junk and complete chaos; when in reality they are the results of very valuable experiments. BTW I have many reasons to believe that your room/system sounds celestial.

Now, if you are saying you can make an opinion in pictures about my rooms? Clearly you can, is it going to have any value from the acoustics perspective? absolutely not.

And I hope you are not suggesting to trust someone’s opinion that can’t discuss things without making fun of  and degrading people, making rude and despicable comments about people with autism because they call him out on his nonsense, or anyone’s for that matter, based on a picture; over the engineers that design, including the new Munich symphony house, and tune most of the symphony houses in Europe, Japan, and Australia?

I am not afraid to say that I am ok using every tool/process possible, which includes measurements, to achieve the best sound I can out of my room and systems, without having to making the rooms look like a recording studio because it is not our style.

When I hire the sound engineers that come to accommodate my rooms, I am glad they bring measuring equipment and not cameras. So they can take a bunch of measurements, make recommendations on how to move some things, have my partner and I sit in our listening positions, we play our music while they measure all along; so after the process we chose what sounds best to us, and they finetune the speakers, subs and very few set of treatment.

Ears can’t care less on pictures; ears are blind, they do not see or look, they hear or is it listen?

I apologize for my English as it is not one of my native languages.

OP after setting up enough square or rectangle rooms with 8,9, or 10 foot ceiling you kinda know where you're at.

In Master M’s laboratory not so much. I would only enter with permission and then only with a guide. I’ve been in a few (Tesla) labs in my life. You just don’t touch stuff or enter without permission.

The only issue I have with that set up is the wife listens to more Stereo than me.
She would take a rake, a hoe and most likely a machete and clean the place out.
She knows what works for her too. 2 hours she would be up and running stuffing pillows for starters in the corners after that.

Sorry Master M. She would offer CPR if you needed it after your 2-3 year journey to get there.

I have no doubt your Sanctum is the pinnacle of sonic genius. Your selection in decor is rather spectacular too. I personally can see the work it would take to get a room to look like that and sound good. That wouldn’t be a problem for me if in the end it DIDN’T stay that way.

Knowing we can achieve perfect sound at the expense of having to visually block what I’m surrounded by is not something me or the wife could do. Experimenting yes, permanent NO.

After 40+ years in the same house, she know the rooms as good as me.

I just watched her move the dog from in front of the right monitor, the dog went back over and laid down. She got a couch pillow close to the same size and dropped it on the left side in front of the speaker.. LOL I never said a word..

I did get "THE LOOK" when I called the dog though.. :-) She snatched the pillow back up..

Regards