If you were serious about sound you would...

with large budgets, why not hire musicians to play in your room to get an idea

of the real thing?

smaller name pro artists work for very little and would likely take even less for a quick private show

with the amount of funds some people drop on this hobby, you could bring in a nice rotation for less than the cost of one high end component

Within that logic we need the dimensions, furniture and treatments for each room of every studio if were gonna do it right. Is this an april fools thread?

Is this an april fools thread?

Not at all ...

It just that most audiophiles confuse gear and acoustic condition and information , They dont read about acoustics and think that when someone talk about acoustics he means merely some panels on a wall ...

I am not a gear fetichist... For me the source is acoustics information multiple trade-off in a room coming first from microphones types and location of the recording engineer choices then the source is the relatively good or bad translation by the system/room for the ears/brain of the listener location in a controlled or uncontrolled room .. The source is not the dac or the turntable by themselves  because  they are only the conveyor of this  timbre/spatial acoustic information already determined by the recording process but untranslated  yet in your room acoustic and for your specific ears/brain ..

The fact that we own high end costly gear may help but dont solve acoustic problems especially if we do not understand them to begin with ...

How is it possible to get better sound than the best recording studio gear?

For sure the better the gear you own the better it will be ... This is a complete common place fact  tautology missing the main factors which is not the gear price tag and design even if for sure it matters ...

It is possible to improve on studio recording acoustic listening , why not, with only good gear even if it is less costly one than the recording gear from the studio , if you listen in a very sophisticated dedicated acoustic room with the BACCH filters for example on any relatively good high end system ...😁

Psycho-acoustics process and parameters rule the gear not the reverse ...

Gear fetichism is dead and psycho-acoustics mature enough rule...

I must say I agree with @mahgister in an important way, acoustics is missing in so many audiophiles rooms that are very serious about playback it's sad. 

The point of this thread is very simple - if you were serious about playback you would .... answer:

Reproduce a studio mixing room. Mixing studios all over the world mix music after it is recorded they take many tracks of individual instruments vocals effects and mix them together to create the musicians and producers vision for the music. In the professional world you build the best room you have money for and you use monitors and equipment that any experienced professional mixer can use when he or she sits down at the desk. If you use boutique non mainstream equipment the mixer will not know how to use it or trust the mix and the producer will pay more money and that studio will go under.

If you as an audiophile have better equipment than the studio uses you must ask yourself why? None of  the extra musicality you get from the 50k DAC is heard at a typical mixing session that extra information you are getting is not used or mixed or a part of the music that you are supposed to have.

Having musicians play for you is  not a good idea because you aren't able to mix and change the sounds in the same way the studio can, unless you are listening to an acoustic trio or quartet with no effects live musicians also won't sound as good as a well mixed group on your high quality playback system because your seat won't be as good as the microphones placement (very important) in light of the acoustics of the room, the dynamics of the instrument, the reflections of the room the loudness of the instruments and many times the quality of the musicians and their different individual talent levels.