Have you treated your listening space?

BTW, I have a custom sized one that I bring to parties, and it matches my shoes

Roxy54,

Most any room can benefit from bass traps, particularly in the corners. In addition, broad band absorption (which usually needs to be at least 4 inches thick) is also helpful in most rooms. One of the goals is to have frequency balance in the room. It was (and still is) amazing to me how much room treatments have improved my sound -- much more than any equipment that I have ever purchased or borrowed. There is no doubt that everyday room furnishings can help, but the idea that you can get the same frequency balance in a room using drapes, etc. is nonsense.

If you are serious about considering room treatments and do not want to spend alot of time reading books, I would suggest you contact GIK Acoustics (or one of their competitors). My experience with GIK has been terrific. You can send them pictures of your room, along with dimensions. They are very patient in answering questions and will recommend what they think will be most effective and their prices are very reasonable. My experience is that they are very low sell pressure and super helpful and patient. GIK has a very good return policy if it doesn't give you the results you were hoping for. I am in no way affiliated with GIK, just a happy customer. I was skeptical about the effectiveness of room treatments, but am now a believer and frankly was stunned at what a difference it made. I have also educated myself on this and now appreciate more the science behind why it works.

Good luck!

Edge22, I am currently renting a house for the next 6 months, but when I buy one, I am going to take your advice. Thanks!

I've heard a number of rooms with all sorts of treatment. A friend has a ground up special room that costs more than the average house (has the full design/build supervision by Rives). I like the room myself, but, a number of other friends find the result offputting (too cold and analytical sounding). This Rives room is actually one of the better full blown treatments I've heard; a number of other heavily treated, professionally designed rooms I've heard sound REALLY bad to me (they exaggerate the current audiophile trend toward lean, detailed and lifeless sound).

Many of the better rooms I've heard were normal rooms with a lot of "treatment" in the form of bookcases, art objects on the walls that act as diffusers, effective use of carpeting on the floor in front of the speaker, and most importantly--very carefully located speakers and listening position. I've even heard a room that is all masonary block that sounded great through the use of some very pleasing to look at tapestries.

Myself, I have a room with open spaces around the speakers, a lot of clutter around the perimeter, and tube traps in the corners--that is enough.

More than anything else, it is the proper location of speakers that matters--most rooms have at least one decent location. The trick is to find the proper location and to make the hard choices/compromises--aesthetics/space utilization vs. sound, decent sound for multiple listeners vs. ideal sound for one listener, etc.