Why we (often) upgrade the wrong things (first) and ignore the important things

I like him very much, as well. He is a breath of fresh air. For one thing, he refuses to frame issues in either/or polarities, such as "measurement vs. listening". The fact that he acknowledges and covers both the objective and subjective aspects of topics he discusses elicits my respect and appreciation. He certainly seems very knowledgeable from an engineering standpoint but manages to avoid burying the viewer in jargon. Is he perhaps a university professor?  The clarity of his presentations suggests teaching expertise. 

On another point, some of us focus on changing gear and cables because we don’t have the leeway to change our rooms. The fact that this approach has less potential for significant improvement compared to treating the room does not discourage me from experimenting to see what can possibly be gained. 

some of us focus on changing gear and cables because we don’t have the leeway to change our rooms. The fact that this approach has less potential for significant improvement compared to treating the room does not discourage me from experimenting to see what can possibly be gained. 

I liked that he addresses this point. He's basically saying, "It's critical to first identify and estimate the magnitude of your constraints. If you don't, you can experiment but you'll have no idea if there's a chance you can make a gain. Some may be able to, but others won't, and they'll chase gear forever. Needle in a haystack."

Agree 2000% treat your space and measure... why I like small listening spaces easier to control... 

My experience is that, in a non treated room with a less than ideal size, experimenting with cables, fuses, equipment isolation footing or just about anything other than changing a major piece of equipment, does not result in any significant changes in the sound. Doing it in a properly sized and treated room and I can hear a clearly noticeable difference in any and all experiments. Huge difference.

I find what he is saying to be accurate. For about 20 years prior to retirement, I installed acoustical treatment into various venues (lecture halls, class rooms, meeting spaces, churches, gymnasiums, auditoriums, etc.), In most cases it was to tame a highly reverberant spaces so speech was ineligible.  I can tell you first hand that you could throw all the money you would want at a sound system, but until the room was acoustically corrected, it was a waste of money. As he stated in the video, but in a slightly different way, you're only as strong as the weakest link, and a lot of times the weakest link is the acoustics.

Now that being said, once the room is treated, a system can live up to its potential. Acoustics seems to be one of the "voodoo"  items because it is not understood.

In the kind of work I was doing, it was a matter of simply reducing reverberation times from as high as 10 seconds in some churches, to 3-5 seconds in lecture halls. In the world of hi end audio, it is much more complex because you are dealing with imaging and sound stage, etc, and it doesn't take much to play havoc with both of the above and frequency response. 

I suppose it is easier to throw money at equipment because the spec's justify "improvement", whereas with acoustics, it is a gamble into the unknown.