Room Acoustics
Room acoustics is certainly the most dynamic because there are simply so many different materials involved, deminsional differences/variations, and variables for equpiment and furniture placement. It's also very time consuming, physically exhausting, and mentally challenging.
Most of us have to compromise when making choices with the above factors and usually try to make the most of the space available while still trying to achieve good sound quality. I think that this is why we replace our equipment. It's easier to go out and buy another receiver or new set of speakers than it is to figure out how we can rearrange everything in order to achieve sound nirvana.
If you have a wife and children you also have to consider them. You may also have to consider your life-style and friends. It's not just about furnishings, equipment, room deminsions and money. It's also about realtionships. It's about how the sound equipment affects others too. Most of us have two objectives that we are trying to achieve and both are untangable - good sound and good, sound relationships. How can you make it all work in harmony together so that you can achieve your goals.
For those of you with spouses (hopefully just one), who will want to rearrange the furniture? It's not usually one of us. It is usually the wife that will want to rearrange everything a hundred and one different ways before settling on something (or deciding to go with what you originally had). And then you also have to consider where your equipment will wind up and make the best of it. This is probably one of the main reasons YPAO, MCACC, EZ set, and most of the major av receiver manufacturers have been able to sell us on auto setup. These seem to work great for the most part (except for the lowest octaves) and most of us can live with what they can achieve with our room layout with little or no effort on our part. A few clicks and a few minutes later everything is setup for us.
It's also more effort than most of us are willing to put into tweaking our systems. It's easier for us to put in a few more hours at work and throw a $1000 at a new piece of equipment than it is to redesign a room. It could be a lot less expensive too. It comes down to time, money, effort and the actual overall improvement.
If we could know in advance that setting up a room would achieve result A and setting it up another would achieve B then we could arrange everything as ideally as possible. Most of us will choose to balance comfort with a sound quality from our system we can live with.
