If you have a nice system why do you really need room treatments?


Yeah you may need an absorption panel if your room is completely open, ie. No rug or furniture, ie just lonely single chair. But if your system can't cut it in any room then it's a system problem and you should be able to discern a good system regardless of the room.  Unless you put it on the roof of your apartment building but the Beatles seemed to have survived that effort

I think people go nuts with all this absorption acoustical room treatment stuff and it looks kind of awful.  Once in a while you see a really cool looking diffuser panel and I would definitely want one. But to have a system that works really well without any of the acoustical panel distractions is a wonderful thing.

emergingsoul

It’s about a really nice system in a room and you should be able to discern the qualities of a really nice system in room.

Sure. But if you had the wherewithal to scientifically tune the room I am sure that would make the great sound of a great system sound even better. However, to say that the differences in a good system and a not-as-good system cannot be discerned in an untreated room is not true.

I dont agree. Without a decent room you cant discern, effectively, what differentiates good from not so good. I think the room is more important than the components assuming the system is of sufficient quality. 

Forgot to add that I have a dedicated room, but the dimensions are about as bad as can be. A bit more complicated to deal with these types of problems. 

I dont agree. Without a decent room you cant discern, effectively, what differentiates good from not so good.

Of course you can.  For example: in a bad room you have one amp hooked up and the soundstage is confined to an area around the speakers--you upgrade to a better amp and the sound becomes "bigger" and fuller.  You upgrade to a better preamp and you note that the imaging is greatly improved and therefore the soundstage is better defined.  The improvements you note would probably be enhanced in a tuned room, but it's not like you won't hear them even in a bad room.