A stupid question for which there's no sensible answer.

The room. A smaller room is likely harder to get right than a big room. I have big speakers in a small room and it sounds perfect, but there is a bit of acoustic treatment and DSP magic behind that.

A million dollar system or a $1000 system likely both will sound bad in my room unless the room was taken care of with treatments, both hardware and software based.

Another effect solution is the RAAL SR1a headphone (or ear speakers). Incredible sound and listening experience. Nothing like traditional headphones.

A few responses: I probably wasn’t clear about the complex room question. What I meant was, is it possible that a complex room is already a good audio setting without having to do any fixing? It seems like this is conceivable, but I have no experience to really know. Secondly, I like the way my system sounds, but I’ve never heard a system better than mine to compare it to and my ears are not nearly as sophisticated as many of yourra. So my question doesn’t come from a point of view of having any complaints, but from a curiosity about what makes a system sound better. Third, to the poster who isn’t enjoying reading our posts, The obvious solution to your discomfort is to not read this thread and not be burdened with posts that you don’t find interesting or valuable.

Depends what you mean by complex. If you happen to have a large room that is open without walls close  to the speakers and a listening position between the speakers, then yes. But that wouldn’t be complex.

if you’re room is carpeted, and you have wall coverings that absorb/disperse the sound and high ceilings, and he wall behind and in front off the speakers is a good distance then maybe treatments won’t matter. Still need to make sure electric is isolated and vibrations are eliminated/minimized.

@audio2design 

You are SPOT on!

The only thing I might change would be to add #2b See #1 AGAIN!!!

The speaker is the most important element. It is what translated the electrical to the sonic world. The other item is the room. You simply can't solve poor room acoustics with electronics alone. You can help for sure and to an amazing degree sometimes! But you can also do more harm than good if pushed too far.

Drew

Can the elements in a complicated room cancel/balance themselves off so that it ends up being a good room for sound. For example, slanted, high wooden ceilings and wall-to-wall carpeting, and windows and absorbing furniture all seem as though they add weight on either side of bright or muffled, but perhaps they can cancel each other out?

So close to the truth.

Every surface reflects, diffuses, or absorbs, to some degree or other. A book shelf full of books all the same size and lined up is just another wall. The same bookshelf with books of different heights and thicknesses some sticking out others shoved in, is a quadratic diffuser. The worst sound is a bare rectangular room with nothing in it, because the parallel walls bounce all frequencies creating lots of cancellation and reinforcement and uneven response.

In the vast majority of cases what happens is the midrange and treble ranges are handled pretty well just by normal furniture and decor. What few problems remain are pretty easy and obvious reflections that either can or cannot be handled, usually depending on factors having nothing to do with audio. Windows, doors and spouses being high on the list.

The same physics that dictate the above also dictate why almost everyone has the same problems almost without regard to the room. This is because low bass waves are 40, 50 feet and more. At that scale all our rooms are almost the same. This is why almost everyone has the same bass mode problems.

These problems can be solved with a lot of big expensive acoustic treatments. Or they can be solved with a DBA. Your call.

Either way, what we come back to each and every time, what I said in the beginning, there is no one thing more important than any other thing. There’s more than one way to skin this cat. Or beat this horse to death. As the case may be.....or as usual.... is.