You are listening to two rooms. The room where the sound was recorded, and your listening room. You have a choice. Listen to one, or both.Your room is the more powerful one, when disapearing itself she can let emerge the acoustic atmosphere of the original recorded event, and more importantly when she compensate for what has been lost in the recording event in his own way AND increase the positive aspects of the original acoustical event...
This is how powerful your room acoustic controls could be....I know it first hand....Passive materials treatment by the way are only HALF of the story, unbeknownst to most... Activation of the room/speakers relation with Helmholtz science is the missing half....
Acoustic sellers of bass traps dont inform us about that part...A right balance between,reflection,absorption and diffusion is not enough... It is half the story especially in small room irregular geometry, or complicated topology and acoustic content....We must recreate a depth imaging space encompassing the listener in spite of the irregular obstacle in the small room and we must refine the speakers/room timing frequencies wavefront for that.......Helmholtz science here help a lot..
I use a homemade simple "mechanical equaliser" only made of tubes, pipes and straws with capacity to modulate the neck at will.... The location is crux of matter... I will explain my method in my thread "miracles in audio" in the week to come...I called my device "Helmholtz pipe meeting the first wave front"...An electronic equalizer is NOT a mechanical equalizer... One work with a microphone, mine with ears, one work with very narrow frequencies responses,mine with large dyssimetrical modified frequencies response different fom each speakers without modyifying the drivers responses of each speakers but instead their first wave front relation with one another in the room...I am not a scientist only a creative mind who gave to myself the right tool... It work even if my knowledge of acoustic is elementary ....Peanuts cost by the way...
A room is NOT a passive sets of walls only , it is an organized sets of different pressure zones...
All seems good when you think that upgrading electronic is enough, save for those ignoring acoustic which pay the price, unwilling it or not...
By the way i only used discarded materials and homemade devices THEN setting a room could cost nothing... Listening time is the price....
The greatest asset in audio is NOT a 100,000 speakers and amplifier but a room you can control....It is not a turntable or a dac either, nor a tube amplifier instead of a solid state one; it is a room you can learn how to control sound....
This is the myths and useless wars between audiophiles in all threads.... Simple acoustic is always the main player....All the others players are secondary choices with their positives or negatives...
Acoustic reign supreme, uncontested queen of musical and sound perception for millenia.... Not your dac or your vinyl so good they are....