Your advice to speakers designers

Hi randy,

I had an extensive "build thread" on AVS for my home theater/2 channel room reno.  It's still there but unfortunately all my pictures were hosted on a site that moved from free to paid hosting, and since I didn't pay eventually all the pictures disappeared.  There's only one picture (for some reason) at the very beginning of a "room description" thread you can see here:

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/29-what-s-your-system-configuration/1259917-rich-s-variable-image-size...

The sofa is massive and soaks up a lot, but much of the treatment is hidden in the ceiling, which simply looks like a build-down structure to house lighting, add architectural detail etc.  But it's actually using a tensed brown felt fabric treatment stretched across the ceiling of the build-down, which allows a whole lot of absorption to be hidden at strategic areas.  Overhead the speaker area it's like a giant bass trap.
There's also absorption built invisibly into the wall corner area on either side of the screen.   Further, there are various types of curtains, of various thickness, that can be pulled to anywhere on the walls to cut down reflectivity as desired.  (For instance, there is a cover for the reflective fire place area).   So I can go from a more lively or less lively sounding room, depending on what suits the speaker.  The fact that the room is open to the hallway on one side also seems to relieve bass node problems.

You can see just part of the ceiling build down at the top of the photo.

No one ever recognizes it as room treatment because it just looks like architectural or decor detail (and the rest is hidden).   But, to my amazement, one of the most common comments I get, even from non-audio people is "This room sounds good" even when we are just talking in the room.

It was a very tough set of criteria to balance in that room and we did quite well all things considered.

Cheers!

Get out of here, imo.

Over time I've come to better understand what drives this hobby.  Stereophile is a better word than audiophile.  It's mostly about the stereo for most people.  It's similar with watch lovers.  It doesn't much matter how well the watch tells time, although it does need to tell time.  Exclusivity, talking points, luxurious looks?  I'm not sure what it's all about. 

I've always wanted the best performance for the money.  Since I'm like 99.9% of people and don't have infinite funds I have to limit what I'm gonna spend.  If I'm gonna spend 10k on a pair of speakers I'd take the ones that have the best performance because they're painted flat black and all the money was spent on the things that influence performance.  I understand that manufacturers have to spend on looks to stay in business.  I don't criticize them for it. 

Yeah, I have about $1k, perhaps a little more, for the upgrades next year. Self-imposed limit for now. So do I upgrade interconnects, power cord (s) or phono stage? Cannot upgrade anything else for this kind of money except maybe cartridge, that I won’t do without upgrading phono and interconnects first. And I am not going to buy anything new. In fact, I will not ever need anything new except perhaps a dac or whatever else they will come up with and maybe a cartridge, though I could get a used one from a reputable seller.
So, looking at it from this angle, I am not interested in future speakers designs at all unless there is something spectacular and relatively affordable. I see a number of $5k - $7k used speakers that would be good enough for me.
Most people, even very dedicated ones, don’t have a lot of money for this stuff. Not 99.9% but 90% for sure.