Michael Fremer's system

Great kit, but I am surprised that he has such huge speakers in a near field set-up. I appreciate he says that this is his workspace, and a tool, but surely to make a tool operate properly it must be put in the conditions to make it work - you ain't gonna use an F1 car on a rally track...

As for "not getting great sound" in a room like that...

Some of the best sound I've ever heard were large speakers in small rooms.  (That includes mine, but I've heard higher end speakers in other small rooms).   Often a small room means the speakers end up closer to nearfield, taking out some of the room.   That's also how I listen to my floor standing speakers and they usually sound much better than demos even in larger, dedicated high end audio store rooms. 

Of course not every large speaker will work in every small room.  But, so long as we aren't talking about someone placing speakers haphazardly in a reflective tile bathroom or something, someone who knows what he is doing can render terrific results in atypical rooms.

But that’s not the argument. The argument is whether you can get good sound in a small room with a huge number of LPs and other clutter. I say you can’t. It’s the old entropy problem beaming down at you, in spades. ♠️

Fremer does not seem like a dumb guy to me. He has heard a great many systems, probably more than anyone here. It’s his job. So don’t you think that he would know that he could get better sound with a nice pair of monitors, maybe a sub, and a low power tube amp at a small fraction of the price of his current system, if that was the case?

I think he owns the equipment he owns because he has listened to a lot of gear in his room and he likes the sound he gets with the big amps and big speakers best. Better than all the high priced monitors and SET amps and headphones he has heard. That seems the most likely explanation to me.

Or has listening to all that vinyl addled his brain and he no longer behaves rationally?

big speaker - small room --->  BOOM