https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Psychoacoustics-Lo...
The book is backed by quite a few decades of research and controlled listening experiments with trained and untrained listeners. It really is authoritative.
Dr. Toole is also very generous with his time on various audio forums and YouTube channels. So by all indications, you are also supporting a pretty decent human being.
If you think this hobby is about the most precise
listening experience you would be wrong in my eyes.
It's more about the presence/power you get from a system
that can saturate a 20A circuit with transients.
The research done by Floyd Toole and Sean Olive and others tells us that all other things being equal, listeners prefer speakers that accurately reproduce the input signal.
https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Psychoacoustics-Lo...
But, I also agree 100% that gobs of power and accurate reproduction of those transients is also key to listener enjoyment and that this is something that is currently (no pun intended) undervalued by the objective audiophile world.
In a modestly sized room one can have their cake and eat it too, with regards to studio monitors. My den music room is about 200 ft^2 / 19 m^2. In this room I have studio monitors crossed over to a pair of subwoofers and it's able to push some very satisfying output levels.
I'm at work but I fired up Skitch and made this ridiculous little drawing, which should explain the situation somewhat. http://www.nybergh.net/stuff/linked/2019/08/hifi-cottage.png
Basically, we're using the corner of the L-shaped kitchen+living room space to our advantage by moving the couch a bit and pointing the speakers there. The sub sounds super clean anywhere near the convex corner with the fireplace.
I find that the biggest challenge is the stereo sweet spot, which always is going to be annoyingly garbage and narrow with two-channel stereo. The subtle room reflections help a bit, and we rotate seating to make it a bit more fair.
I read renowned Harman researcher Floyd E. Toole's 'Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms' and he seems to agree that there's not a whole lot that can be done about two-channel stereo. In fact, Toole rants in favor of three front channels quite a lot, and well as mocking audiophiles who think their rooms are going to be likely to not need basic tone controls on reproduction gear. https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Psychoacoustics-Lo...
But back to business, with this nice house we don't really need to do much. The log walls absorb a lot, while leaving a nice little lively touch that makes it not feel like a padded room (one of my friends had a padded room before for music, and I've decided I definitely prefer a room that feels a little bit alive).
My friend has this DSpeaker Anti-Mode 2.0 for room correction http://www.dspeaker.com/en/products/20-dual-core.shtml
The same friend has two Genelec 8330A active speakers that could do room correction on their own https://www.genelec.com/studio-monitors/sam-studio-monitors/...
Then we have a previous model of the Genelec F One form factor subwoofer, I can't remember the model number, which is alphabet soup, even though it's connected to my system at home. https://www.genelec.com/home-speakers/f-series-active-subwoo...
The Genelecs are both compact, durable and easy to transport, and we have telecope model stands for them. They have a super nice mid range for guitar and the human voice, and they're also quite nice to look at.
When we set up the space, we basically let the DSpeaker box do its frequency swipes for ten minutes or so. We'd be fine without it even, but it just clears up the bass so nicely.
I second this recommendation. Chapter Two of Dr. Toole's book is titled "Preserving the Art" and directly addresses the concerns you're raising. He uses a great quote at the end of this chapter:
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted". - Einstein
Dr. Toole then spends 500 pages addressing how you can correlate objective and subjective evaluation of loudspeakers. It's a great read.
First, I want you to consider for a moment how remarkable it would be if we had no idea how to objectively measure "good" sound considering that this is a multibillion dollar industry that has existed for over a century. A world where we can calibrate televisions and movie screens objectively by automated means but not, for some reason, their audio counterparts. As rational minds might expect we don't live in such a world.
You'd want to look into research by Sean Olive, Floyd Toole. Here's probably your best starting point: https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Psychoacoustics-Lo...
The TL;DR is that it turns out that most people prefer sound reproduction that (like video reproduction) is accurate to the source material, with a bit of a "house curve" that accentuates the bass frequencies that roughly corresponds to the Fletcher-Munson equal loudness curve. In the end, it's signal reproduction.
I don't realize it because it's not true. A person's hearing can change rather markedly from day to day due to factors like congestion, humidity, etc. This would be a remarkably laughable and irreproducible way to calibrate audio reproduction devices.Audio technology companies that are serious about high quality sound reproduction make use of anechoic chambers: https://nrc.canada.ca/en/certifications-evaluations-standard...
...and/or measurement devices like the Klippel NFS to simulate anechoic measurements: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/u...
...and/or measurement devices like Audio Precision gear: https://www.ap.com/
Of course, audio companies do tinker with their sound to some extent for subjective purposes. A lot of brands try to achieve a bit of a house sound. Ultimately though, audio reproduction is not wine tasting. We can objectively measure what is good and isn't good.
There is also room for subjective personal preference. Everybody's hearing is a little different. And even Floyd and Toole's research reveals average listener preferences. But ultimately...
Well, everything. As you know, "sound" is pressure waves in the air. Those pressure waves can be objectively measured in terms of frequency and amplitude. And those 1's and 0's in a digital audio stream for example have objective meaning. They are not a series of opinions. They represent frequency and amplitude. Anybody telling you otherwise is simply uninformed, or trying to pull the wool over your eyes and sell you something.