A very interesting video. This gave me somethong to think about. Production value has gone up!

Wow! You really went above and beyond to perform that test! Bravo! You can certainly hear differences between each of those rooms and so, while I believe that the room matters, the “stuff” that’s in that room (and the quantity/composition of stuff) provides its own degree of “treatment” which may be sufficiently effective as to make real, actual “acoustic treatment” less important than thoughtful setup of the system and keeping it sufficiently furnished and decorated. I was listening to the demos and not watching (I’m at work) and when it got to the small bedroom I quickly turned on my phone to see what the setting was because it was clearly the best sound of the bunch up to that point (and overall as it turns out). And that’s very interesting by itself as people always poopoo small rooms as being suboptimal. But that was clearly the best sounding room for this test. Thank you for all the work you did to put this together! It was very enlightening.

I think one of the pitfalls of audiophile culture is a general instinct to want to be "right," "correct," or "know the best." This is another hobby of connoisseurship, like wine or cigars or cars or fashion or even pure art - you do need to understand the complex interplay of contributing values including everything from manufacturing processes to the process of informed, taste-based selection, and everything in-between. But some get fixated on a single point as if it defines the existence of the universe and the very nature of truth. People who are cynical and declare snake oil and audiofoolery, those who try to tell you in what fixed/numeric proportions to invest in the different parts of the signal chain (especially when they say "x system factor has the single biggest role and needs the most attention or money"), both the strict and unforgiving measurements crowd as well as those who fall blindly for marketing without any skepticism, and anyone else who takes on any pedantic/overly prescriptive soapbox platform, regardless of what camp they belong to, are all the ones most likely to be wrong. The truth is, it's a balance of all those things, plus the education and dedication to want to educate yourself, that together make a good audiophile system and a good audiophile. If you are detracting from the value of one thing and trumpeting the supremacy of another, you're doing it wrong. A good audiophile is a happy audiophile, one with a receptive, positive approach to appreciating the strengths and not ruing the weaknesses.

I'm enjoying your more sensible take on listening and equipment.

Love this topic!! I think that the listening room really sets the tone for you to enjoy the music, and your listening room ROCKS!

Good video! I have a room that is OK, but have no choice but have one speaker in a corner and the other with no wall behind it for 10 '. I compensate by adjusting the balance. No matter what anyone "thinks" as I upgraded my equipment, the sound gets better. Bad equipment in a fairly bad room doesn't sound as good as good equipment in the same space. Logical and provable. I say that because some of these comments seem to say it won't matter if I'm interpreting them correctly.

Great video. Thank you for taking the time to do it. I have a near field set up in a small bedroom and I LOVE the sound I get in there. Even using a small sub in the room. It’s a work in progress and fun to experiment with.

Hi Dave, Glad to hear you address speaker placement vs audio rack placement. For over 30 years I've placed my speakers on the front wall. My turntable, and all my other components are placed10 to 11 feet from the left speaker, on the left side wall. I can count on one hand how many of the systems I've seen through the years are set up this way. BTW, if you haven't already, can you please do a video on your system?

They all sounded good. The listening room had the most detail. Also Rega Brio R is a great sounding amp.

Superb experience ✨️👍

The room means everything!🤯🤓😎 Not even sorta close. Thank goodness I have an A+ room with c+ B- equipment!🤔🤫🤪 Nice bathroom footage!😝

A breath of fresh air, I love your perspective here. Hey real quick my friend, those speakers versus Kef LS50 Metas, your thoughts would be appreciated greatly.

I have a very cheap system and it sounds much nicer when I move the speakers away from the wall with not too much volume. Maybe having soft furnishings in the room absorbs some of the reflective hight notes.

Always the Room and speaker placement is the Most Important !! ,, people forget it

Nice video. Cheers.

Everything is important The least important is audio consultant

this is an excellent video and a unique view in the audiophile world . IMO room conditioning is mostly relevant to those that are listening to their speakers and gear. however for those that are focused on an emotional experience via lyrics , singers and melody , room conditioning is not very important or maybe completely unimportant . the above internal reaction/s can occur under any and all circumstance . The exception to room conditioning is the original Polk SDA speakers . you can plop those speakers down in any room , set up the required distances outlined in the manual and you get an instant soundstage with all of the various words used to describe such a thing. Source - source is mostly relevant to those listening for extreme details in sound reproduction . The source form my SDAs was a Sony Walkman Professional😂. From Bach to peter gabriel to the horrendously bad recordings of little Richard , it all sounded fantastic . Question- has any audiophile ever considered 'conditioning ' the listener ? It is the listener that should be refined first and foremost over all externals . if the listener is in a refined level of consciousness their senses will be able to experience subtle qualities emanating from external sources far greater than manipulating one's immediate environment . ok i'll leave it there and wait for the thread to explode with a few truculent retorts .

Great video! I know this took a lot of time and effort and I really appreciate your hard work! And, I agree with a lot of what you said. No, you don't need a "perfect room" to really enjoy music, and yeah, I imagine you may be able to hear subtle differences in components even if the room isn't perfect. And I couldn't agree with you more that speaker placement within a room has a drastic effect on the quality of sound reproduction. But I respectfully believe your conclusion is not correct. You said that the room is not the end all be all. Can you give me any other component besides maybe speakers, that would produce such an audible difference as each of your rooms did? Like, the difference between each room wasn't subtle, it was jarring! I believe you could seriously ask 100 people to listen to this video blindfolded and most would be able to hear each and every time you switch rooms. Show me one other component swap out (with the exception of a sub maybe) that could get 100/100 people saying there is a difference in the audio. I'm just kind of shocked. If you suggest that a cable, which at best has a subtle effect that no video here on KZfaq has shown yet, or at worst has no effect on the sound, can make such a difference, why would you discount something such as the room that CLEARLY makes such a huge difference? Only one of those rooms was the closest to reproducing the most accurate sound that the artist intended you to hear. And that can be subjective. (But measurable too in terms of frequency response, bass gain, timing, etc.) And again, I do agree with a lot of what you say here. I do agree that someone starting out in this hobby doesn't have to spend a fortune on their room to get it perfect to start. But some care must be taken to treat the room to achieve the best results. And in some cases, they may be better off to spend more time and energy on the room, than on a particular upgrade, to achieve the best sound. Again, great video and thank you for putting in as much time as you did. Even though I don't agree with your conclusion, I really do appreciate all the hard work you put into making this video and I wish you the very best of luck!

Thanks for the food for thought. It’s an ongoing quandary… how to maximize what you have. Have a small room and while I have considered near field listening, I haven’t really tried it yet.

Nice video. I don't think your testing really confirms your theory. If this was a paper, the conclusion would be "further testing is in order" lol. If it sounded best near field, that implies (to me) that minimizing room influences generated the best result. Almost going into a headphone scenario. Your tests showed, to some degree, that a good sound could be found in most rooms, but the room does have an effect. Maybe I can carry on a conversation with someone at a party, but it's a bit easier without background noise. My listening room is better than a garage, but that's about it.

Nice experiment ,but i find almost impossible to hear music in your garage ,it sounds horrible , sorry , my brain refuse to equalize the sound in those "BAD" rooms.....

I think there are quite large differences between the sound in the different rooms. The highs were much more apparent in the large bedroom compared to your normal listening room. The sound in the small bedroom was more similar to your listening room. The garage as expected gave very poor sound. I suppose that is consistent with the tenet of your video that you could get a good sound in either your normal listening room, the large or small bedrooms if you played around with speaker placement etc. Even the bathroom didn't sound too bad to me.

So I'm curios what do you think of the galion voyager TL? I'm really thinking on purchasing them. Also what's the minimum wattage U rwcvomend for those speakers? 50-60w at 8 ohm or more?

In my listening room, I have floorstanding speakers (Transmission Line) where 1 speaker is 29'' from the side wall and 3 feet from the corner. On certain low frequencies, the bass 'hangs around' or reverberates. I am not really able to move the speaker to a better position. Do you know how I might reduce or eliminate this please ?

. Well, Cocktail Party hearing exists & you have managed a psyhcoacoustic equivalency argument, however consider these couple factors which make Party hearing possible; * Party audio sources are multiple and each transmitter has an unimpeded straight line to the ears, whereas stereo provides but two sources. It is easier to "filter" (focus) with clear voices rather than a mash-up of echos. * Vision is important to clarity. Successful Party hearing necessitates observing the speakers' lips & facial expressions. Neither live nor dead rooms change that. On a different note........................ . (12:38 to +-13.35) I applaud your observations of component arranging & placement. I think it must have begun with early social media. Way back to MySpace, where one picture posts seem to have been ingrained. Piling all the gear on the ground between the speakers, lol, is just the silliest thing except that it makes for an attractive thumbnail pic etc. If there were a poll done & we chose the worst place for a turntable, it would be right smack in the middle of the loudspeakers. I can't imagine tubes like it there much either. Acid Jazz, Funk & Brass 🔈🔉🔊

hi, I'm putting together my hi-fi, cables, DAC, amplifier, streamer, every piece of electronics affects the sound a little, but what really affects the sound the most is the room, you can change and buy the most expensive cables, speakers, amplifiers in the wrong room it will be useless

WELLCOME - DOBRODOŠLI?? WAAW!! NICE! :-)) I will be as short as possible. The stated theory is true in an evolutionary or capability sense of our nervous system, but in your case is very tailored to subjective interpretation and insufficient if we are regarding some other didactical and cognitive theories even in general about our responses to stimuluses and different sensitivities. Strictly or sarcastically we can then say that we (audiophiles or music lovers) can listen to our wife (and even talk to them) and do quality critical or relaxed listening to music. That would be a phenomenon or a lie. Or... how then a differentiation between gears and speakers also is not a kind of psychoacoustic phenomenon => it would mean that we are all, especially audiophiles in a psychotic state of mind. In my study years I had subjects of didactic, pedagogy, psychology, anthropology, evolution of living systems, etc. And if I may boast, at my 53 and 54 year I had clinically 98% preserved hearing on my right ear and 92% on my left ear. This differentiation in hearing results in positioning of speakers or sweet spot, since my sensory system translates this in a bit stronger "right hearing" or slight leaning sound stage to the right. But I can also agree with you, since you are a low volume listener and yes, it depends on room and speaker positioning... Here is my general opinion on this subject which I have already posted in variations on some other YT channels recently. My observations are in acoustically untreated rooms - especially modern ones (treated room is at least absorption of first reflections on all four sides + some bass absorbers) at avg. listening volume over 72 or max 75 dB, its reflections starts to interfere with the sound stage in such manner that many finer frequencies (across all Hz spectrum), details, nuances, layering, imagining etc in the sound stage are getting messed up and somehow lost, especially at avg. listening volume 80 dB+. It means it does smear the source qualities, so it also smears the gears' differences. If you can in untreated room hear clear difference between triode and linear or other modes with tube amp at cca avg. 70 dB listening volume, at over 80 dB or 85 dB would be almost the same sound stage mess, just "noise" - the wall of sound - and for me unbearable for focused or relaxing listening, especially with more open, brighter (a good ones) speakers. But I can also notice that a part of listeners or audiophiles - their register - are not sensitive to such issues, they simply do not notice such changes in frequency responses in the music. They are more orientated on the main music lines, tactile effects of music presentation - mostly the bass amount or effect. Volume= EQ. Somehow yes it is, or the volume can be also considered as adjusting the room's frequency response. Kind regards, Maj