Some famous reviewers have atrocious listening rooms!

And sometimes “the room” is just voodoo.  Long living room and dining room,,38x16,,divided only by brick fireplace that’s centered, with peaked ceiling at 16 feet,,open on both sides of fireplace.  Last week I’m working on placing tongue and groove pattern board on the ceiling.  I’m up on a scaffold with my head at @15 feet, behind the fireplace.  Music playing in the living room, on the other side.  I love my system, always sounds wonderful.  Up at the ceiling, the music sounds 3 dimensional, floating.  I climb down, it sounds normal great.  Back up on the scaffold it’s wow.  I love that kind of stuff 

cracks me up the fashion critic fails to lead by example……by… ahem…. posting pictures of the system…their…system…

What is a great room, what is a bad room? I've recorded in underground water reservoirs with over 20 seconds echo and recorded in rooms that have produced 1000s of gold records, at the end of operating jet engines and in opera houses that were reserved for royal invitations only over the last 35 years and I can tell you some of the most popular rooms for recording sound very strange. The playback room shouldn't add anything, closed headphones do a good job of showing the proper vision of the mixing engineer and that's about it. How can a listener judge a recording as if they were all the same? Some engineers care some don't and all of them are working with a budget, there is no standard recording sound studio so how can there be a standard sound in a playback room. After you hear a song you are very familiar with your brain will compensate for the acoustics in about 5 seconds in whatever room you listen to it in. 

The bottom line is you should listen not read🧐