Is your listening room acoustically treated?

[David A]

I haven't read all the thread posts, but I eyed several that advocate as a good listening room to be as important as good components.
Scientifically, this is absolutely true. From the human point of view, though, isolating myself in a dedicated room (I could have one in my basement) would imply cutting down my time to listening sessions by 90%.

You are presenting acoustic treatment as an "all or nothing" sort of situation. Acoustic treatments basically do one of two things, they either absorb or they diffuse sound. Lots of things absorb sound with professional grade treatment products at the extreme end of the scale. Carpet is an absorber, soft furnishings can be absorbers, curtains can be absorbers. Things like bookcases stacked with books of different sizes, pictures of different sizes or other wall hangings on walls, furniture placement along walls, and other things can help diffuse sound. Most rooms have absorption in them and it's possible to use targeted placement of normal room contents to control reflections and increase diffusion to varying degrees.  Applying acoustic treatment in a room does not require that the room end up as a dedicated listening room and arranging normal furniture items such as rugs and furniture in order to improve sound quality is just as much an act of acoustic treatment as installing specific acoustic treatment products. There's a lot of acoustic treatment you can do with normal living room items to improve the acoustic behaviour of a living room without destroying the room's function as a living room, in fact people may never notice that things have been arranged to help improve sound quality.

One would definitely hope that a  "dedicated listening room" would definitely be a "good listening room" but one can have a "good listening room" without it being a "dedicated listening room". You just need to work with your room and what you have. The other thing I would say is that if having a dedicated listening room is going to cut your listening time by 90% then the last thing you need is a dedicated listening room but that doesn't mean you can't have a good listening room or that you can't find ways of making the room you are using  into a better listening room.