Thanks for clarifying, Jack, and yes, there exists a number of benefits to having a better launch pad as you say. So when you speak of untreated rooms you're really thinking quality of construction materials and build quality but still within the realm of custom-built rooms. When I hear somebody say untreated rooms I'm thinking lack of in-room acoustic treatments inside perhaps any type of room.
You bring up some good points so perhaps I should also clarify something. I was initially speaking of setting up a hopefully well-thought-out playback system in perhaps most any given but somewhat "reasonable" room for best sonics. By reasonable, I'm implying reasonable dimensions and space, symmetry, carpet/pad, minimal reflective furnishings, etc. Though I'm pretty confident in a pinch and with some time I could probably forego some of those reasonable essentials as well. IOW, I stand by my earlier claims that superior or even best sound can be achieved without a well-designed meticulously-constructed room or even without a reasonable room. Within reason of course.
I appreciate your saying that an experienced individual could overcome many of the gross problems. However, in your latest post you said at some point there's no escaping the room's imprint and in an earlier post you stated that a system is only as good as the room it's playing in .
From my perspective I would say, no room is any better than the system playing in it and if at some point a room's imprint remains evident, the playback system has fallen short of the mark. Simply because there exists way too much ambient info available in most any given recording such that the moment one presses play, they're transported to somewhere / anywhere within the recording hall or at the very least out of the listening room. IOW, the potential volumes of ambient info available in most any recording and kept audible at the speaker (due to a system's dramatically lowered noise floor) should sufficiently and completely overshadow perhaps every last imprint of a room. With perhaps the exception of soundstage expansion which to a good extent is limited to the physical listening room's dimensions and hence a speaker's ability to sufficiently breath and disperse sound in that physical space will be restricted.
So I suppose my position is, the influence of a given playback system's ultimate performance potential should far outweigh the influence of a given room's ultimate performance potential.
BTW and just slightly off topic, I'm kinda' surprised that few if any make any mention of their preferred listening volume levels when discussing a listening room's potential benefits or perhaps any performance-related topic as I would think this an oh-so-critical factor. For example, I generally listen in the 92db - 105db range depending on genre and cut or on average maybe 99db. At these volume levels, the potential exists to expose much of everything good and bad. But if I listened at say 65db as I know one reviewer prides himself nothing much is influencing much of anything so very little really matters at these elevator music volume levels.
Actually, anything less than live performance volume levels and influences and playback performance becomes restricted or limited. Nothing wrong with lower listening levels but I think knowing others' listening volume levels adds signficant context to whatever performance-related topic is at hand.
And just to be clear, without hesitation I'd give somebody else's left nut for some of these rooms. But if it were my own, I'd have to give it some thought.
Anyway, thanks again for clarifying.
