I see that many are coming to the defense of the reviewers and their rooms, which is fine. And I agree that you can't really tell how a room sounds simply by the looks of it, but I would argue you can make an educated guess. And I would argue an "educated guess" is what some reviewers are providing their readership.
I've grown to realize that the room itself has the biggest impact on how my stereo sounds, period. And over the years, being a service member who moved around frequently, I've had my system in many, many different rooms of all sizes and shapes. All sizes and shapes within the budget of an enlisted service member's salary, that is.
And through it all, a properly set up room has been key to my musical enjoyment, the key to the music sounding its best regardless of the equipment I had at the time. And more recently, I finally "splurged" on a bunch of GIK treatment which really opened my ears to what a properly treated room can do for any given stereo. Before that purchase, I always had make-shift treatment using what I had available. If I was going to spend a grand or two on something, I wanted it to be something that "mattered", like equipment, or so my ignorant-self thought. I wish I would have discovered proper acoustic treatment 40 years ago! Live and learn, obviously.
And 30-40 years ago, we didn't have access to all the information available to us nowadays. Reviews in magazines were pretty much all we had. Stereophile (when sized like a reader's digest), Listener, TAS...awaited for anxiously each and every month and read cover to cover and dreamt about the gear that was in them.
And those reviews, at least to me, carried some weight simply because I didn't have access to anything other than those reviews. No stereo shop near me ever carried much other than mid-fi and lo-fi stuff. And that is precisely why I am a bit disappointed when I see the rooms from some of these "rock star" reviewers.
Like many, today, if I read a review, it's more for entertainment purposes or to see if said gear is something I want to research further. Everything I read is taken with a grain of salt. But back in the day, if a rock star said it, I believed it. Young and naive, like many of us in the beginning of the audio journey.
Man, that was long post.
