The biggest lie in home audio is...

liverpool_for_life

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It's all about the speakers. Wrong!

Unless you are extraordinarily lucky (or built a room from scratch taking acoustics into account), it's mostly about the room, especially for those of us living with concrete all around us. If you don't measure and address the issues with your room (either treatments and/ or room correction solutions), you aren't really listening to the speakers you bought after extensive auditioning. You are predominantly listening to your room.

Bottom line: Whatever your budget, apportion a reasonable amount (on a percentage basis) to help with your room. I've seen numbers as low as 5% to as high as 20% of the cost of your audio system. It truly is that important.
 
If you are talking about to reach the peak of music ecstasy then one will never achieve and the biggest proof is people spending and upgrading their gears year after year. But cheap and good speakers can easily tell you the difference in adequate room environment. Most of the people love or listen music doesn't have their room acoustically treated. Acoustic treatment also demands a good price, many people have their system in living room, bedroom, home office or elsewhere and people generally don't treat the said rooms acoustically in their homes (exceptions are there)

Yes if someone have a dedicated HT or music room in their home that must be acoustic treated and this demands a huge cost. Trust your ears, upgrade gradually and enjoy music :)
 
If you are talking about to reach the peak of music ecstasy then one will never achieve and the biggest proof is people spending and upgrading their gears year after year. But cheap and good speakers can easily tell you the difference in adequate room environment. Most of the people love or listen music doesn't have their room acoustically treated. Acoustic treatment also demands a good price, many people have their system in living room, bedroom, home office or elsewhere and people generally don't treat the said rooms acoustically in their homes (exceptions are there)

Yes if someone have a dedicated HT or music room in their home that must be acoustic treated and this demands a huge cost. Trust your ears, upgrade gradually and enjoy music :)



Totally agree.......
 
I guess the biggest lie is that you will get "Live singers in the Room"

reproduced music will never sound truly Live and you can only try and get it as near live as possible even with the best of recordings.
 
If you are talking about to reach the peak of music ecstasy then one will never achieve and the biggest proof is people spending and upgrading their gears year after year.

The reason, IMHO, is they don't know where the source of the problem is. There is zero point in upgrading speakers if you don't know what the issues with your room are.

But cheap and good speakers can easily tell you the difference in adequate room environment.

"Adequate" is the key word here. The odds are quite good, where we live, that the room is indeed a major issue.


Yes if someone have a dedicated HT or music room in their home that must be acoustic treated and this demands a huge cost.

That's the point, though. When you make a budget, factor in the cost of acoustic treatments. If not, it's quite likely you'll not get close to enjoying the potential of the speakers you purchased.
 
I'd sell the room first if stuff sounded that bad...

Beside selling you can treat it for better sound. That's another thing if you are a professional musician by profession you should have a perfect acoustic treated room and then it's called a office/home studio , right.

If some one is a casual listener doesn't mean he/she doesn't know or love music :) I'm not a pro but love listen to music. My room is not acoustically treated but my gears sounds good. A GOOD amp+DAC+speakers sounds very nice to anyone's ear.

It's like a never satisfaction journey specially if someone have enough cash to buy expensive gears. Costly gears sounds awesome no doubt and if someone can spends so much he/she must have enough cash to make a dedicated room for sure :)

I've not awesome things but still it took some years to gather all and it sounds good. Cheers!
 
Beside selling you can treat it for better sound. That's another thing if you are a professional musician by profession you should have a perfect acoustic treated room and then it's called a office/home studio , right.

If some one is a casual listener doesn't mean he/she doesn't know or love music :) I'm not a pro but love listen to music. My room is not acoustically treated but my gears sounds good. A GOOD amp+DAC+speakers sounds very nice to anyone's ear.

It's like a never satisfaction journey specially if someone have enough cash to buy expensive gears. Costly gears sounds awesome no doubt and if someone can spends so much he/she must have enough cash to make a dedicated room for sure :)

I've not awesome things but still it took some years to gather all and it sounds good. Cheers!


Agree whole heartedly......if one's line of work is studio recording / musician / instruments etc then a Treated room / studio is a must!

For most of us.....space is a premium and hence we have to make the best with what we have and the hunt continues with regular updates.....some of us get only time during weekends to playback the expensive gear sitting in our homes....
 
Costly gears sounds awesome no doubt and if someone can spends so much he/she must have enough cash to make a dedicated room for sure :)

TBH, I would disagree on both counts. A great speaker in a terrible room isn't going to sound awesome at all (I should know). And not everyone who has the cash to buy "costly gear" truly cares for sound quality.

Most people simply seem to disregard the room they are listening in. Your system is only going to sound as good as the weakest link in the chain will allow it to. And, for most people, an untreated room represents that weakest link. By far.

My usage of the term room treatments encompasses both physical as well as device based correction. If not the former, at least the latter. Preferably both.

As a point of clarification, I am not passing judgement on anyone who doesn't measure/treat their room. I am just saying that if they decided to do so, they may be (very, very) pleasantly surprised by how much more they can wring out of their equipment.
 
Yes...we had a few members who made changes to their rooms and systems (tweaking) and yes it was a different ball game then for them.....for most obviously it was better than before......they have shared their experience ......

We are all here to help each other in the best way and to suggest alternatives for the best AV experience.....no one is judging anyone
 
Well isn't that the reason Audyssey etc are there to hear the room and then correct the output tp make it sound better. and yes they do make a big difference.

and if it still doesn't sound better then tweak it manually.

room correction would work for people whose line of work is Audio editing/composing etc or "Audiophiles" who want to hear it without any distractions to the sound. Its a never ending saga.A simple person would/could make a few not so drastic changes if that may help.

and perhaps instead of the best kept secret or biggest lie, a topic that says " May your room sound like a million bucks in just 5000 rupees" would be a much appreciated topic

Take the example of a truck driver and his music system which is a cheap and harsh sounding system its probably only a vocal blaster which has tons of distortion etc. yet the joy he gets could be compared with an audiophile listening to his pristine source playing music that is audio nirvana to his/her ears.

the quest for getting better will always be there be it for a 1000rs system or a 20lakhs system
 
TBH, I would disagree on both counts. A great speaker in a terrible room isn't going to sound awesome at all (I should know). And not everyone who has the cash to buy "costly gear" truly cares for sound quality.

Most people simply seem to disregard the room they are listening in. Your system is only going to sound as good as the weakest link in the chain will allow it to. And, for most people, an untreated room represents that weakest link. By far.

My usage of the term room treatments encompasses both physical as well as device based correction. If not the former, at least the latter. Preferably both.

As a point of clarification, I am not passing judgement on anyone who doesn't measure/treat their room. I am just saying that if they decided to do so, they may be (very, very) pleasantly surprised by how much more they can wring out of their equipment.

You may be right on some points and I'm not doubting but the way you expressing your thoughts..in such case why not remove the word "home" here A home encompasses a number of and variety of masses, right. The biggest lie in home audio is... is good to go and now discussion will go to eternity. Cheers! :)
 
Hehe...makes it sound like a conspiracy of some kind. Not too long ago i was invited to a kid's birthday party and the host raved about a Bose 5.1 system he had purchased and how great it was. When I walked into the living room, there it was, in all glory and shine. All five speakers were on the front wall right up there touching the ceiling, in perfect line up. then he cranked it up and and was looked at me in anticipation to stroke his ego.
I didn't know where to start? I asked him if the store guys installed it for him. He said he did not trust them with the walls and asked his carpenter to install them. That's it.
 
Hehe...makes it sound like a conspiracy of some kind. Not too long ago i was invited to a kid's birthday party and the host raved about a Bose 5.1 system he had purchased and how great it was. When I walked into the living room, there it was, in all glory and shine. All five speakers were on the front wall right up there touching the ceiling, in perfect line up. then he cranked it up and and was looked at me in anticipation to stroke his ego.
I didn't know where to start? I asked him if the store guys installed it for him. He said he did not trust them with the walls and asked his carpenter to install them. That's it.

:D and that's why he had BOSE.
 
Hehe...makes it sound like a conspiracy of some kind.

Heh. If not a conspiracy, it is, at the very minimum, a deliberate withholding of what is undeniably true. When you put your newly purchased speakers in an untreated room, for the most part, it's the speaker's interaction with the room that dominates the response you hear.

He said he did not trust them with the walls and asked his carpenter to install them. That's it.

That'd be somewhat like me 4 years back. Except I had a Sony HTIB and I wasn't impressed by how it sounded. After I'd had them installed by someone who said they knew how to set up a 5.1 system.

I still don't have anything like golden ears, so I have to rely on measurements to see how good (or terrible, in my case) things truly are.
 
Bottom line: Whatever your budget, apportion a reasonable amount (on a percentage basis) to help with your room. I've seen numbers as low as 5% to as high as 20% of the cost of your audio system. It truly is that important.

Please suggest a few basic treatments that most should be able to do, that are not visually (too) jarring, doesn't cost too much, and are effective.
 
Please suggest a few basic treatments that most should be able to do, that are not visually (too) jarring, doesn't cost too much, and are effective.

I would also love to know something feasible and cost effecting way. Will help me to think about in my home office space where I listen to music from morning to evening while working.
 
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