There are many home built these days with "open" floorplans - which sometimes translates into one huge room in the back of the house, two stories high, with the kitchen, dining, and 'family-room' area all in one. Add that to a design style that insists on marble and wood floors, and hard walls and ceilings . . . you get a house that's so reverberant that it's fatiguing to be inside it . . . and I'm not talking about hi-fi. The mere clanking of dinner plates makes one want hearing protection.
I think this type of acoustical blunder is unacceptable, and most here would agree. So why is it okay when we do the same aesthetically, in the name of acoustics? It isn't actually very difficult to arrange a hi-fi system so it's at least okay to look at . . . but it does take some imagination.