@mahgister no one said that acoustics treatments don’t sometimes yield positive contributions. All contributions to the sound can be made better individually and that is what most people do. I am not most people and I’m using my knowledge of sound reproduction, acoustics, and sound perception to approach the task in a different way, which I consider a smarter way. It is not a good or bad , black or white, or binary proposition. Acoustics tuning and the use of acoustics treatments can be done right if properly implemented by someone knowledgeable.
I’m going to do the same thing that I do with others and disarm you right here and now. Here we go so you can see how much I know about the concept of room acoustics:
1. If you know anything about room acoustics and sound perception you know that the room does not make any sound in and of itself. The room must be excited by a sound source, in the case of home audio systems the source are the speakers. The speakers are the source of the acoustical excitation of the room.
2. Each sound source excites the room uniquely based on it’s radiation pattern, which is dictated by the speakers design’s polar wave propagation and the room’s geometry.
3. The source excitation of the room various by its spectral content and scale.
4. Room acoustics can be optimized based on the source characteristics and relationships with the room’s boundaries.
5. Therefore you can optimize room acoustics for a particular source, with it’s unique radiation, spectral and scale parameters, to a particular room geometry, and to a particular spatial layout between the speakers and the room’s boundaries boundaries. It is this very unique arrangement that can be optimized and every deviation, whether is volume level or music type will be a perturbation away from optimal.
Based on the above, you cannot optimize a room’s acoustics in and of itself, any optimization must be done from a system’s perspective, factoring in the source and ambient characteristics & spatial relationships, and subject to derating from optimal by a number of factors including the temperature and humidity in the room. There are so many factors involved that when you speak of optimizing room acoustics and psychoacoustics, I just chuckle because you have no idea all that is involved and how source dependent the room’s acoustical response is. Room acoustics are a function of the excitation source.
I could go on but hopefully that gives you an indication of what’s involved and how improbable and impossible universal room acoustics optimization are.