Do NOT Blow Your Entire Budget on Two Channel Audio

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, "What a good boy am I!"

---Mother Goose

Audiophiles have been "wasting" great equipment long before room treatments became the next best thing to market to the insecure. Fear is a great incentive.

Getting so wrapped up in it to the point where one says "Toole has a room like mine", when it’s the other way ’round, and posting shots of recording studios that one has copied doesn’t make them one of the big boys of audio but just someone who now has invested so heavily into it he needs to have validation in his choices by forcing them on others as there’s comfort in conformity and herd mentality.

This constant, nagging insistence goes beyond congenial advice. Long ago I experimented with blankets over my TV screen and found better center stage focus and clarity. Mounting it 2’ further back on the wall bettered that, negating any need for a blanket. Trying quick ’n cheap fixes to see if results warranted anything else proved futile: no need for further investment. Having a recording engineer physically check out my listening space (not looking at a graph) and pronouncing my space good enough was all I needed to hear.

There’s plenty of online and in print discussion of improving the sound of your system simply by moving closer to it. Get your speakers a bit further out into the room and/or move your listening position a bit closer. If your room is on the smaller side like mine is, you’re most of the way there by listening in the near field.

Speaker placement and toe in can do wonders to improving things. This is age old advice that’s worked for... ages. The acoustics in the room can be as much as 50%, not at least that amount. Nothing would work if that were the case. There’d be no great systems of the past or memories of hearing them. Again, fear sells. With all the links the OP provides, it makes me wonder if he’s getting some kind of kickback for it and his constant, hard sell approach.

All the best,
Nonoise

In my opinion you can’t have a good object based system without a good channel based system. Object based audio is not an island that you have to leave channel based audio to sail off to. I advocate budgeting for both, why not have it ALL:

@nonoise 

I strongly agree with you. Yes, there is a place for room treatments, and they can certainly be effective, and just as certainly, they can be overdone. For the OP to flatly state that good systems are a waste without room treatments, and without him ever hearing them is plain ridiculous.

And yes, the OP overbearingly pushy about this "object-based audio." Good for you if you like it, but what's good for you isn't necessarily what others want or even care about. Let it go.

@nonoise Wrote:

 Again, fear sells. With all the links the OP provides, it makes me wonder if he’s getting some kind of kickback for it and his constant, hard sell approach.

My sentiments exactly!

Mike

To each their own, but I’m just not interested. I’m a guy who tried quadraphonic sound way back when. Really, instead of concentrating on a marketing gimmick (and trying to sell more stuff), I’d rather studios simply create great sounding masters in two channels. That would be a START in the right direction.

I mean, home theater is yeah, a big market, but how many people do you know who have more than a 5.1 system even here in 2023? I don’t know very many at all. Most people I know who have huge 65" to 85" TVs are still using a crappy soundbar. Only one serious guy at work has a "theater" set up in his basement with about 11.1 speakers. And you know what? I wasn’t THAT impressed by it - not for music. Movies with helicopters and spaceships, well maybe.

Until studios can get 2-channels right, I don’t think there’s going to be any rush to listen to crappy 11.2 or whatever. Just my two cents. YMMV.