my point was only that if a concert hall was designed with an acoustic agenda, and not just a big box, why can't a listening room also have some acoustical design behind it?
Good question, Mike. I could start off by saying a well-designed concert hall has quite a different purpose and must take into account many sound sources (instruments, vocals, etc) but individually and collectively for various sized audiences covering vast distances whose space is potentially many times the size of most any listening room. In contrast, we have significantly smaller listening rooms with 2 sources of sound if no subwoofers with the smallest number of listenings a very short distance away. IOW, we may have a genuine love for a particular venue's sonics. But at home, what does that have to do with anything?
And presumably every room already has a slant of its own. But what if one did intentionally influence a room? What principles and what slants would they choose to follow?
Recordings of live performances are done in thousands and perhaps millions of different venues around the world? Maybe if somebody only listened to recordings from one venue, there could be a benefit. But I doubt it.
In reality, we're hopefully hearing a great multitude of venues with most every recording we hear with all recordings. But here's the rub with your philosophy. No matter how successful one may think they are contouring/influencing a room to sound like something it's not, there's still a very very big problem.
Nobody I know wants to hear the room. Hearing anything from the room is the direct opposite of the old adage, "make the room disappear." and everybody loves hearing somebody say that.
And of course nobody wants to hear the speakers either. Again the direct opposite of the old adage, "make the speakers disappear."
Given the above, what could possibly be the point of attempting to sonically influencing a room in any given direction?
both might be good or bad, or even both good and bad from time to time. rooms start out one way but sometimes evolve.
This all boils down to what we are hoping to hear and/or actually hearing in our rooms. Do we really want to hear the room at all? Or do we really want to hear as much of the recording hall's ambient info embedded in the recording as we possibly can?
Would it make sense if I said the more resolving a playback system the more of the recording hall's natural ambient info we hear embedded in the recording and the less unnatural ambient info we'll hear from the room?
If we do attempt to influence the room's acoustics in a given direction, what might that hybrid generate sonically? We have the room influenced by your preferences and since everybody's system will eek out at least a little ambient info, what type of hybrid sound is formed when those two ambient info sources meet?
What kind of a hybrid of ambient info are we listening to? IMO, anything I hear from the room would be unnatural (compared to the reocrding that is) and any ambient info I hear embedded in the recording I consider natural - since it was captured from the live performance. Some may disagree but that said, I'd venture I'd be listening to a funky hybrid of two ambient info sources potentially duking it out. One unnatural and close up (the room) and one natural at a distance (the recording hall). Wouldn't the results be a complete box of chocolates - never knowing what you're gonna' get?
As for rooms evolving, my room was remodeled in 2007 and about the only serious influential thing I've done since is replace the listening chair a few times. Since the only ambient info I hope to hear is in the recording and the more I focus on that source of natural ambient info, the less I hear the unnatural ambient info of the room.
whether those ideas have anything to do with great sound or not is a different point. only those intensions don't disqualify it as artificial out of hand as Graham inferred.
Isn't this where somebody is supposed to chime in with, come let us reason together?
and great sound is a personal judgment, not any objective truth. but some groups of listeners might tend to have a bit of convergence about stuff, but not always.
Yes, it is a personal judgment but sometimes I think we go out of our way to further personalize things. And I can't figure out why we might entertain such thoughts in a high-fidelity pursuit? How high can audio fidelity get if we're attempting to sonically influence in any way what we hear? How genuine is that high fidelity?
FWIW, I think it's amazing how our personal judgments change as our education improves that much more with most every sonic difference we hear.