Advice

[David A]

As of two nights ago I would put setting up your listening seat and speakers to work in the room you have as the first priority. 

…

So there you have it; Set up> Room treatment > Changing speakers > move to 250.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think set up could be so good that room treatment becomes less important.

Yes you are right. I had hastily lumped together setup and treatment, but you are right, treatment comes only after you have a good setup. 

And a good setup can do wonders, especially by reducing the impact of the room if you are listening in near field or quasi near field. 

By the way, near field is a great solution if you have a difficult room that you cannot treat for any reason. 

So I’m not surprised that you came up with something really good. For most of us the place where the listening spot is cannot be moved arbitrarily in the room. 

Personally, I’m considering myself very lucky because was able to setup my living room taking into account my system with a high degree of priority. 

Jean-Marie

Can I beg to differ, just slightly? :-)

I don't regard room setup as something different to room treatment, I regard it as the first and most important step in room treatment. What both address is the way sound behaves in the room and how and when it arrives at the listening position.

Most of the time when you see people talking about room modes (standing waves) and their relationship to room dimensions you could be forgiven for assuming that room dimensions determine not only the frequency but also the strength of the modes. While they certainly determine the frequency, the degree to which any given mode is activated is determined by speaker location. Once the degree of activation is set, the next determinant of the strength of the mode is the listening position. Room setup also affects the higher frequencies and the unmeasurables like soundstage and imaging.

What this means is that the acoustic behaviour of your untreated room is actually determined as much or more by your setup as it is by the room dimensions. A good setup means there's a lot less work to be done with room treatment while a bad setup means that even the best room treatment will never achieve the best result the room and system can deliver.

The takeaway from that is that if you can't afford or can't instal room treatment for some reason, good room setup is essential to getting the best result you can achieve in your untreated room. If you can afford and install room treatment then good room setup is esssential if you want to achieve the best result possible in your room. Room treatment can't repair all of the shortcomings caused by bad setup, it can only stick a bandaid over some of those shortcomings.