Yesterday we discussed elephants and rooms.
Perhaps it makes sense to keep on that path.
Rooms control sound—peaks, dips, and nulls form based on size, shape, and materials—and what you hear at the listening position can be wildly different than what’s coming from the speakers themselves.
We’ve all been in rooms where bass vanishes in one seat and booms in another. Or where the same system sounds great in one room and lifeless in another.
That’s not the gear—it’s physics.
Hard surfaces reflect. Soft materials absorb. Parallel walls create standing waves. Asymmetry confuses imaging. And once you start noticing these effects, you can’t un-hear them.
Taming a room isn’t about perfection—it’s about balance. A few well-placed absorbers or diffusers, and some careful setup work, can unlock clarity and dimensionality you didn’t know was hiding in your system.
The room is the final component in your signal chain. Ignoring it means leaving performance on the table.
