The reason of this conflict is that passive material treatment in general adress more the imaging and position in space than the Tonal accuracy... Active acoustic control adress more the tonal aspect than the location of sound source in space...
I dont have this conflict at all with my audio system because i use passive material treatment and active mechanical control with Helmholtz resonators...
Why this is so ?
Because the right balance between absorbtion-diffusion-reflection make imaging optimal...by taming reverberation time in particular...
But to adapt the room FOR the speakers specs i used active mechanichal equalization were my devices are part of the room in a permant way introducing by their location different pressures zones that optimized for my specific ears the way the speakers deliver timbre tonal microstructure experience...By driving each speakers first wavefront for my 2 different ears by the dyssimetric locations of the Helmoltz resonators near each speakers and around the room...
You are spot on about the uncessary upgrade of speakers most of the time by ignorance of acoustic and psycho-acoustic basic facts...
Room acoustics. I found that a lot of the reasons I wanted to keep changing speakers were not solvable by new speakers but by having room acoustics that helped me see through my room.
Giving up on imaging. It’s not that I don’t care about imaging, but given a preference I prefer hearing the acoustic recording space, and smooth tonal accuracy over being able to feel musicians in my room, or attempting to place each violinist. These items are often in conflict and I made my choices. This is also related to giving up on cables. I found too often I was giving up musical experience for imaging.
