Great article. Myself, those mentioned and other acousticians certainly sympathize with the lack of awareness regarding acoustics in the audiophile arena. I hope your article opens eyes and ears for many searching to optimize their listening experience and equipment investment. I would like to add a hierarchy for achieving audio nirvana:
1. Set up
2. Calibration
3. Acoustics
4. Equipment

You can make decent equipment sound good in a good environment, but you can not make excellent equipment sound good in a poor one. It seems that many audiophiles battle over #4, while #1, 2 and 3 are missing basic performance values, hindering the electronics of their full potential.

Insightful stuff. I believe you've left out one important aspect though - the boast factor. Fear of wasting money in other audiophile's eyes - room treatments are mostly unknown, unbranded and sometimes almost invisible. So others won't know how much you've spent. The ability to impress friends is a big part of audio psychology and room treatments do not have the wow factor of huge heatsinks or bright shiny transformers with glowing valves.

A slight disagreement with Mr. Dudley. When discerning people walk in to my room, they go "Wow!" even when no music is playing. The acoustic space can be felt and heard and is amazing.
Secondly, it is often the amount of money spent on a component that is the boast factor. If that is the case for a particular audiophile, they can have their room done by one of the "complete makeover guys" such as Norm Varney at AVRS, and spend $40K on it.
Yes, this is an unsolicited plug for Norm. His work is amazing. His name belongs right up there with the others mentioned.

I appreciate the point of the piece and agree that proper set-up and room-tweaking is generally far more cost-effective than simply shelling out for the latest and greatest megabuck product.

But--no mention of Jim Smith, whose prowess at setting up show exhibits is legendary in the industry, and who literally wrote the book on the subject?
http://getbettersound.com/

Jim also travels worldwide doing nip/tuck/tweak.

Thanks for another useful, insightful piece.

Good stuff, but here's my 2 cents.
I suspect that most who read this column would would prefer to listen to a live musical performance in a good music hall than an over reverberating high school gym. If you accept this premise; It follows that most would also want their listening room to sound more like the music hall than the gym. Yes, there are many different sounding halls. But please accept this universal “music hall” for the sake of this discussion.
Most of our customer's sound rooms fall within these two parameters: music hall vs gym. Mr. Hodas, Kieth Yates, and Norm Varney set out to move the acoustical outcome more towards the “music hall” than the gym. I give them a standing ovation for their efforts.
High fidelity audio 'playback' product produces linear frequency response, low noise, and maintains phase. I also give these manufactures a 'standing-O' for their efforts. But the insertion of electronic manipulation, as Audyessy in the path of their 'playback' product, changes the output of their audio signal; that by definition is distortion.
The passive acoustical treatment and setup engaged by folks as Norm Varney's is a better option. Richard Hardesty, the AudioPerfectionist.com, once presented the issue as follows. ( I am paraphrasing from memory). The use of an equalizer in 'playback' is much as changing the tuning of a piano to overcome the bad acoustics of a high school gym. The better solution is to move the performance to a better hall or improve the acoustics of the gym.
Indeed, the new generation of electronic 'playback' equalization has improved. But its use is still a band-aid to be avoided or limited to small doses; if you still seek high fidelity audio reproduction.

As a long term practitioner of providing complex 'room EQ' in professional settings (I did the Grammy's for 7 years, the Oscars for 6 years, and about 400 other high-profile events, and developed Apogee sound's CORREQT system tuning method), I offer this:

When room resonance is correctly identified with a high-resolution spectrum analyzer (usually an FFT), and inverse EQ is applied that correctly counteracts the room resonance, the measurable phase response ALWAYS improves. While IIR EQ filters (those are the usual ones - as opposed to FIRs) will exhibit phase shift in proportion to the amplitude of boost or cut they are adjusted to, if they are properly adjusted to correct an acoustical problem in a room, the net result will be an improvement in phase response. If audiophiles were able to actually view the results of EQ (and numerous other factors) on legitimate test equipment (i.e. Hewlett Packard, Bruel & Kjaer, etc.), 90% of the mythology that drives most of the business models would evaporate rapidly. Many professional sound engineers who work in recording and/or live sound realize, quite clearly, that high-end home audio is far more about fashion than engineering. BTW, I have a rare pair of $20,000 two meter speaker cables available...to anyone who needs them :). They're made of a revolutionary material I've cleverly named Cu. Life changing - trust me!