If you have a nice system why do you really need room treatments?


Yeah you may need an absorption panel if your room is completely open, ie. No rug or furniture, ie just lonely single chair. But if your system can't cut it in any room then it's a system problem and you should be able to discern a good system regardless of the room.  Unless you put it on the roof of your apartment building but the Beatles seemed to have survived that effort

I think people go nuts with all this absorption acoustical room treatment stuff and it looks kind of awful.  Once in a while you see a really cool looking diffuser panel and I would definitely want one. But to have a system that works really well without any of the acoustical panel distractions is a wonderful thing.

emergingsoul

Yeah I've got an area rug that I plan to put there and see if it has any effect. Aesthetically I don't need it but if it improves the SQ I'll move it in and out as the room function changes.

Sorry, but that is an incredibly ignorant view of how sound works.

A room isn't some benign bystander. Just because it doesn't have bare walls and no furniture it doesn't mean it has no impact. The dimensions of the room itself can ruin even the best music equipment by creating nulls and standing waves.

 

Is the OP trolling us? Or does he earnestly know that little about sound and acoustics. Either way, I'm dumber for having read that post.

 

 The problem is that homes are built with the worst possible acoustics. Walls and ceiling/floor all parallel to each other causing standing waves and their harmonics - all bad. That is the cause, breaking up those resonances is the only solution.

As this is allegedly a settled topic I will wade in only briefly:

- audio truism #1: the room is half your system.

- when my wife and I renovated our 1865 4.5 story brick townhouse based on a Calvert Vaux #5 design from his Villas and Cottages, I turned the 390 sq ft .5 story gable-ceilinged (no right angles) attic into my dedicated listening room. I did not cover the 5”-13” of rock wool insulation in the walls and ceilings with sheet rock. I instead covered it with fire resistant burlap. So: no acoustic panels: the entire ceiling and wall is an acoustic panel. Moroccan rugs cover the floor. The room is semi-anechoic: people immediately hear the difference in the sound quality of the room as they climb the stairs and enter the room.

See

theaudioatticvinylsundays.com