"The room can totally wreck, or make, a system"

This is why it is so difficult to get new entrants into this hobby; we keep making it more complicated (and expensive) for newbies to put together a system (including room) that is acceptable to 'us" and not subject to outright ridicule and scorn.

@hilde45 

I totally agree about a good sounding room. That's what good mixing rooms are. 

Studio recordings may or may not feature the acoustic space of the original recording. But the artist/producer/engineer work hard to create the space they want the music to be in. They want you to hear that too. A studio is not some sterile space. Most artists want to feel the emotion of the music in the studio and the closer your room is to a studio environment, the more you hear what was intended. 

Of course, every great studio sounds different so I'm not suggesting there's some standard. You create the room you like. But not intentionally creating a good sounding room limits your ability to hear the recording as it was intended. 

@mashif Understood and agree.

This is why it is so difficult to get new entrants into this hobby; we keep making it more complicated (and expensive) for newbies to put together a system (including room) that is acceptable to 'us" and not subject to outright ridicule and scorn.

I have no idea what this means. We are having a discussion. If some of it goes above a new entrants' head, well that's not our responsibility. This is not a textbook or a "how to" blog. If some new person needs an explanation, they can ask for it. They're not children.

I could've saved a lot of money through the years on equipment if I would've spent time/money on room treatment in the beginning.

The environment is always the first thing to fix, better yet design, correctly and then use room treatments.

Then it comes to placement of all the gear and furnishings, speaker placement most critical.

If the above are truly optimized then there should  be little or no need to equalize

If one must then always best to reduce levels next to dips, not add to the dips.

Next up is equipment, last on the list.

I have set up outstanding high end systems in a properly setup environment then dialed it all in, swapped to a system costing 10% and it was still dang fine and better than most super high end systems I have ever heard.

Rick