I am unclear as to how following the recommendations contained in the above statement would result in the best quality 2ch playback .
Clarification of your assertion would be appreciated.
Scotty
Time to time somebody reports an expensive and/or esoteric system sounding unbelievably good in a huge, relatively untreated room. Without discounting the effort and knowledge went into these systems, these systems have an unfair advantage, the big room.
The big room usually has a not to loud, not too dense early reflection pattern and a benign, relarively long reverberant trail.
Why is it important? To perceive a sound reproduction real you have to supply all the aural clues which were persent on at the original performance. Of these ambient information of the venue is one of the most important. It will not only define the perceived tonality of the instruments ( a single guitar will sound very different in a small live room, in a jazz club or in a cathedral), but also tells you about the room size, your position in the room, the musican's position in the room etc. and most importantly, supply these informations consistently in case of head movements.
Stereo recording/playback focuses on capturing the direct sound of the instruments and sometimes adding a little extra ambience for spaciousness. It can not capture the whole ambience, because our ambience perception is also directional, so playing back the reflections originally coming from the rear throgh a front speaker pair would sound weird. So stereo records have to be too dry compared to the original.
These records played back in a big room which have acoustic properties similar to the original venue will recreate more or less this missing ambience sometimes with spectacular result. Do not forget, when you are sitting farther than 3-4 feet from the speakers, you are essentially listening to the room, not the direct sound. The not to loud, not too dense early reflection pattern and a benign, relarively long reverberant trail of the room will enhance/complete the reproduction, not deteriorate it.
The only problem is when the room acoustics is far form the one on the record. It is a bit hard and expensive to build a room with an opera house or cathedral like acoustic properties at home, and even if would be possible, you'd need more than one room for different kind of music. But for jazz or small ensemble a modest size room is usually good enough. No wonder these are the "audiophile" music genres.
And what is the deal with the small rooms and treatments?
Small rooms - wich we all have compared to any real music venues - usually have very loud and dense early reflection pattern and short reverberant trails. These make the sound cramped and loud in the room. It makes the playback loud but still won't have the impact of the real.
If you start treating the room, the early reflections will not be as loud, but still too dense, and the reverberant trail is even shorter, moving the sound of the reproduction even farther from realistic. There is no right amount of room treatment in a small room for stereo playback.
Some can argue than in a heavily treated room you can hear better "into" the record. It is true only in a sense that you get more direct sound, but that will be neither psychoacoustically complete, nor consistent. It is like watching tv in a dark room: of course you will get less disturbance from ambient light, but it will not make the tv picture any more 3D.
So next time you hear a good sound in a huge room, think about how much of it can be attributed to the room. For us with the small playback rooms have not many choiches. Pretty much MCH is our only hope, but not in it's current form.
