High End System Building. How important is the matching, cabling and room? Thoughts ?

I and several fellow audiophiles with good listening skills and systems have spent good money on treating our rooms with all manner of acoustic treatments. In two specific cases folks paid big money for a room acoustics company to come in and professionally treat the rooms. In the end, the rooms sounded better with all the “stuff “ taken out. I experienced the same thing about 13 years ago.

Few absolutes in audio and this includes “treating” a space with all manner of absorption and diffusion. My current room has a few diffusion panels strategically placed and sounds good so I am all for experimenting with treatments. However, I do not believe they are a must for every room and situation. Just not the case based on my experience.

Experimenting and working hard on speaker placement and listening position is something I am willing to say is absolutely needed.

@mahgister you may disagree, but I stand by my experience and experiences. Also, like you, I have experimented for many years with room treatments and vibration control. Not a newbie at this by a long shot. Some rooms are just fine as is with furnishings, the particular speakers used and how they are placed. My examples are more than one off situations that did not work because the installers were not good at their craft. They are examples supporting the fact that room treatments are not a universal cure all or improvement. 

@mahgister, I certainly see the wisdom and truth of your statement below…

“But this truth of mine is not a "good news" for most people ... Because most will never enjoy this fact ...Then it is not an appealing truth ...It is better to believe the marketing appeal to upgrade and pay for 200, 000 bucks gear system in a living room because marketing assure us that this is way "better" than a 100,000 bucks one in the same living room ... Suffice to read any audio forum to observe this "faith" reflecting the underestimation of acoustics....😊”

@calvinj

Absolutely understand your perspective and personal experience. Well matched gear, including cabling, is another key to sonic bliss. It’s so interesting to me how a well chosen cable, in a position or two, can help snap a system into a subjective rightness. Goodness it all matters!

Well @mahgister I agree with many of your points, but I sense you take your perspective too far and diminish other experiences and audio realities to severely.

Acoustic truth does care about not introducing noise into the environment you wish to place treatments and embeddings. I am referring to signal noise that smears, perverts, and masks the audio signal. So the gear and tweaks audiophiles buy certainly play a role at reducing signal noise. Gear, modifications, tweaks, room treatments, vibration control, component matching, speaker placement, room construction, listening skills, subjective preferences and so much more all play a role in this passion. They all matter. How one comes to realize sonic contentment is a complex meshing of all of this. No one road is the universal way.

@mahgister I have looked at your virtual system many, many times and what you have done is so remarkable and interesting.  Your perspective is valuable and yet another important piece of the puzzle.