Judging by pictures, only a small amount of systems have anything but the most basic treatments, and only a small percentage have serious acoustics. This is supposed to be the pinnacle of high end. I have always felt that is why all the tweaks. It is just different colors of the same wrong.
To accentuate and confirm your position, i will say that when people speak about acoustic treatment they think about some passive absorbing, reflective and diffusive surface balance.... Even rightly done this is not enough to tap into the essential sonic quality of a system...it is necessary to complement it...
There exist also a more active way, where a grid of resonators fine tuned and precisely located could increase extraordinarily the benefits of the passive treatment by a better timing between the reflected wavefronts of each speaker in the room...For sure it is not possible in a living room...These resonators are tuned in relation with the speakers behaviour in the room and modify it for the better....But contrary to electronic equalizer they work with a large bandwidth response for the fine tuning and because it is our ears who did the work and not a mic they work for all the room and not only for a very precise location in millimeter....They are part of the speakers/room and not an external tool....
I dont call that a "tweak"....It is a control working over the acoustical dimension....Same thing goes on with vibrations/resonance control, or decreasing the electrical noise floor...These control devices are not secondary addition but necessary precaution to reach optimal S.Q.
All that may cost nothing and cost me nothing by the way....
The reason why people upgrade endlessly is because they ignore how to improve and install their system....
When rightly done upgrading appear like it is: a marketing mantra...Anyway good sound is not a variable " taste", it is a musical perceived phenomenon, a musical natural voice or instrumental "timbre" is an objective experience because there is musicians or acousticians consensus around it...
And to contribute to the vinyl and digital format wars, i am pretty convinced that vinyl resist more to the degradation of S.Q. in bad acoustical room than digital... But digital greatest potential take advantage of very controlled room to shine... Then the 2 format are differently perceived in different environment....They are way less different than people imagine...
