I have no doubt that very good headphones can sound very good, and indeed with the entire acoustic environment being within the manufacturer’s gift to control (apart from the effect of different shapes of ear pinnae and different amounts of hair that might protrude), therefore they certainly have the potential to sound better than any loudspeaker in any real world listening room. Except, as I pointed out, they have the fundamental limitation that you cannot feel the sound, only hear it, therefore part of the listening experience is missing and do not true to life, and less capable of conveying the emotion of the music than good loudspeakers in a good room.
Yes, and as mixed/mastered or even direct recorded that is how the music was accepted by the artists. But, and this is the key point regarding rooms, the moment you play back and add more destructive interactions as you call them, whether comb filtering, nodal cancellations, resonances, added reverberation etc, then you are no longerr hearing what was recorded as a live recording, but your own system and room’s modification of it.
Now, you might like the effect of doing that, in which case great, when you find your ideal additions and subtractions you can enjoy listening. But if you want to hear the music as it was recorded (and mixed/mastered) then you need the system and room to add or take away as little as possible - which is where we come back to room treatment, well controlled full range speakers as uncoloured as possible (and DSP if applied appropriately).
In the great scheme of things we are never going to reproduce the original performance, we all know that.
HiFi is just a means of enjoying our love of music, and we all distort the original recording in a myriad of ways, so why not the listening room, if it gives us pleasure, mission accomplished!
If it doesn’t then room treatment, I’ve come to recognise, can be a cost effective tool (which I guess was part of the reason @thomas started the thread) of enhancing that pleasure.
“time for bed”
2 Likes
It looks as if I for posterity need to highlight, that my above post was complete ‘ tongue in cheek’, but also thanks to Frenchrooster for getting it at least. 
Thanks Fellas
No , I don’t like it. I have some minor problems with bass , only on a few albums. I ameliorated a lot since but want to tweak the acoustic a bit still. So will investigate some bass traps in 2 corners.
So, no, I don’t like distorsions and bad reflexions. But I don’t like also too much room damping.
1 Like
It was humor Peter ? The sofa tweaking was a joke ?
1 Like
Man, to sound as well as you said it sounded, to me, honestly, it seems to take things a little far; but, well, with resources, time and desire, everyone with their decisions…
I tend to agree with Peter and had a very similar experience after room treatment.
My personal “beta tester” experienced the same (aka my wife)
For me, it was even more then “night and day” .
I probably already wrote that before, anyway here it is again:
upgrading from SuperNait2 to 252/SuperCapDR/NAP300DR was a huge disappointment. I spent a lot of money and got a very poor result.
Room treatment allowed me to enjoy the 252/300 system for what it was. And, as I kept the SuperNait for a certain time before selling it, I could even compare both systems.
Without room treatment, there was a thin difference.
With room treatment the difference was worth the spending.
2 Likes
Yes, I did indeed fill the sofa to reduce its resonant frequency, but my report of my findings was simply trying to inject some humour into this thread, when to me things were getting a little bit too serious and the hair splitting took over. I will now go and sit on the naughty step, but in my book the best laugh to have is the one of your quirky self!
Did my experiment filling the sofa in with acoustic wool help to dampen its resonance at a narrow low frequency band or ‘ singing along’ with the speakers at that frequency - it certainly did, buy clearly the sonic improvement in my description above was ‘slightly’ exaggerated 
ATB Peter
PS. Surely Churchill must have said something ingenious about taking oneself too seriously? 
3 Likes
Newcomer, as you mention resources: £32 pack of Knauf acoustic wool from Homebase and a good proportion of madness thrown in for good measure! 
ATB Peter
2 Likes
Next step, and probably last, in room treatment:
I’m planning to replace those useless foam panels (in terms of low frequencies absorption) with four GIK Monster Bass Traps with Range Limiter (membrane technology). Those Monsters will take essentially care of the low end.
The Monsters will be placed in a nice glossy white frame which will match the diffusers 
2 Likes
Yes, I knew; in my view at least, “a good proportion of madness thrown in for good measure” above all. But I’m glad you’re finally getting into your point without having to completely remake the house…
1 Like
The description is like passionate scenes out of a Mills and Boon novel 
1 Like
Would you not remove those diffusers instead and use absorbers ?
Certainly would make an awful lot of sense Thomas. Could you have them placed right down to floor level?
ATB Peter
OOPS, just spotted your low skirting, so maybe not quite?
1 Like
Good Afternoon All,
When my pocket has recovered from the current expenditure I may order custom height Tri-traps from GIK to fill the gap between the top of the existing standard models and the cornice moulding and possibly a further Monster Bass Trap for the back wall.
Right now I have to say the system is sounding pretty good. Somewhere between:-
-
replacing the NAC82/ Hicap with a NAC52/ Supercap and
-
changing out the Hicap driving the SNAXO 3-6 for a Supercap and
-
implementing SOV2 and
-
moving my listening position to 38% of the room length from the front wall (as per GIK suggestion) and
-
installing the acoustic treatment (the cheapest upgrade to boot)
the system is totally transformed.
Regards
Richard
2 Likes
Interesting question.
The answer isn’t that obvious.
Low frequencies propagate in a spherical way.
Mids and highs propagate like beams.
This means that, from “direct sound”, only the low end (below ~500Hz) reaches the wall behind the speakers.
The 9 diffusing panels (Vicoustic Multifuser 64) will start diffusing around 310Hz.
The rest, lest say from ~30Hz to 300Hz, is reflected and reaches my ears with a delay.
Not Cool!
So, should I remove those diffusors and replace them with bass traps only?
Not sure that is a good idea…
Too much absorption might result in an unbalanced frequency responds, mids and highs being too much absorbed.
I wasn’t really satisfied with the diffusors with the foam panels on the sides.
The reflected low end “hides” the rest.
But the GIK Bass Traps in combination with the diffusors provide a nicely balanced result.
There is no such thing as too much room treatment 
But…
An unbalanced one, oh yes!
And it usually happens when killing to much mids and highs.
1 Like
I’d add that the 9 front wall diffusors are also intended for second reflections , and third, and…
They enhance/sharpen the stereo image without sucking energy out of the room.
I wouldn’t recommend diffusion for too small rooms.
Distance between the listener and the diffusors should be at least 2 meters (depending on the type diffusors).
Bad diffusors might worsen things…
Hi Peter,
I’d rather not having the glossy frame (containing the bass traps) touching the floor.
I’ll leave about 8 to 9 cm. I need that space for… the cleaning! 
1 Like