your listening room is a system component

I may have posted on this topic a few months ago, but this is good stuff.
Check out this (excerpt from an) article here:
It's not about the quality and the price that you pay for the gear. It's a system you're placing inside of another system. And the system you're putting it inside of -- your room -- has far more influence and impact than the speakers and amplifiers on your sound. This is what people don't understand. They think that if you buy a new amplifier or a speaker, you're going to get better sound. Now, if you put it in the same room, you're going to get a different sound. The word here is different, not better. Do you really want to spend all that money for just different? The room has all the control, so spend your money on fixing the room first. You don't need to spend so much on electronics. Keep your speakers and gear and fix the room. Just spend 25% of the budget you spent on speakers and gear, you'll get a 250% improvement on sound quality. That's a great cost-benefit ratio. When you buy new speakers and a new amplifier without first addressing room acoustics, the room just laughs and says to itself, "Oh, another speaker and amplifier, let's see what we can do to mess these up."
check out this YouTube video . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNZrJKigSQQ&feature=youtu.be&list=PLDelqxWk36UgjtdW9AB6natV2yowpHaYC
Check out this website here . . . (and get on their mailing list) . . . http://www.acousticfields.com/
Probably THE best book I have ever bought on audio and hi-fi is this . . .
http://getbettersound.com/store.html

Anyone who knows me knows that I can rant for hours on the topics of Speaker Placement, Room Treatments, and Room Acoustics. If anything, the above statements do not go far enough. And the beauty of the situation in my case is that I've spent a total of $0.00 to accomplish miracles in my listening space. Bags of cement, bags of newspaper, old rugs, towels, and facecloths judiciously applied can transform a mediocre space into a real joyous acoustic environment. My philosophy is this: make your space as close as possible to a Recording/Monitoring/Mastering space. After all, the recording team relies on a neutral acoustic to hear their work. We can never improve on the skill (or lack of same) of the production team. For that reason, I rely on the "deader is better" approach. I can't tell you the number of times I've looked forward to hearing an audiophile's brand-new expensive toy, only to be severely disappointed because he/she has thrown a huge sum of $$$ away by neglecting their space. ANY piece of acoustic material can be replicated at home with some ingenuity. Bass traps? -- no problem. Fill the corners from floor to ceiling with any dense, heavy yet permeable material. Diffusers? Raid the linen closet. There are some pervasive myths that abound as well. One is the insistence on keeping the area between speakers clear. After all, this is where we perceive our soundstage, right? Absolutely and demonstrably false -- if anything, filling up the space behind the plane of your two speakers will dramatically solidify your imaging. Remember that stereo is an illusion.
Right now I'm listening to a Brahms concerto. The solo instrument is palpably centered about where my DAC lies on the console at eye level. The orchestra is arrayed perfectly across the space in front of me. I can literally hear not just three, but FOUR dimensions. All with two well-placed decent B&W Matrix 803 speakers, a modest 60WPC VTA ST-120, an SP14 pre, a Rega DAC and Rega Apollo CD player. Total cost including interconnects, decent tubes and speaker cables is less than $8000. I defy anyone to visit my Magic Kingdom and deny that this is one of the finest systems they have ever heard. End of rant.

Well said, guys!

Anybody else tack carpets to the ceiling?



Memory foam, quite thick, but extremely lightweight. These do a nice job of killing a harsh reflection that would set you teeth on edge.

The full length fiberglass foam backed draperies on the front took care of a standing wave from hell at around 160hz ...

The Auralex foam on the archway cleaned up a lot of strange reflections there as well.



That's the major issues ... everything else is done with DSP software.

PS ... you think yall got speaker placement issues ... try working with Carver holographics on a quad system ...  

well done sKiZo !!
oooh . . . and the color lamps, connected to a 3 band filter?
kind of a distraction from the tube glow, but does wonders for some older psycho music !!

Arguably related to enhancing the music ... can't imagine why lighting isn't a more popular accessory with the audio crowd.

I use a Pulsar SLC4000 sound active controller plugged into the headphone out on my Sansui QRX 9001. The lights are true RGB color photo floods. I also have a set of RGA clears for a change of pace - those are INTENSE in a small room. The flood fixture is homebrew, soldered together with copper pipe and adapters for the sockets and wall brackets. There's also a pair of Chauvet LED MiniStrips mounted behind the speakers for washing the front wall. Those also tend to overpower a small room as they're more of a night club thing - I toned them down with three layers of "limo black" window tint on the lenses.

Slapped together a video showing it all in action ... enjoy!

https://youtu.be/2aGdCtkRUXQ

I've also got an LED helicopter and a couple sound active swirlies that I can add to the mix, as well as a laser or two ... but that requires dramamine and a seat belt ...



The Aeon sound active display on the HTPC monitor is a bit of a bling thing as well ... somebody stops me!!