“Some of the supposedly best designed rooms are often horrible sounding.”A small ordinary room is defined by his geometry ( form+proportion, by his topology (doors+windows) and very importantly by the acoustical different properties of the different materials contituting his content (furniture+books,vinyl,cd, flowers,lamps etc +walls-ceilings-floors) ...
No. A correctly constructed and outfitted room will sound right, by definition.
NO equations here, even computerized pre-fabricated solutions will or could replace completely the human ears....
Designed room are NOT small living room, but even them need the ears designers piloting the work....
Then laws of acoustics dont replace ears....Practical acoustic is an ART based science...
To focus on something relatively minor like cables, while ignoring the laws of acoustics, is something else to be avoided.Here you are more than right....
My greatest discovery in audio, is that upgrading electronic design is often secondary ,if a certain quality product is being acquired... The most important factors being most of the times the 3 embeddings controls dimensions of the audio systems : mechanical,electrical and acoustical embeddings...
Not knowing that is condemning oneself to chaising his tail or chaising the dragon tail , in the 2 cases entering in an endless pit throwing money into the abyss....
Or endlessy arguing meaninglessly about cables, after being deceived by one or after buying a good one, and at worst, arguing at the end with anti cables zealot of scientism... 😁