Hi CV, TomTuttle, Mark, and Ken,
Yes, the notion of "cascading rooms" or doubling ambiance in the playback of a recording that already contains natural ambiance is valid, however, for virtually most domestic rooms (except those with many hard surfaces and no absorption, the actual reverb time of the room is very short, so any contribution of room ambience becomes largely insignificant.
Just try clapping your hands in your listening room and listen for any reverberation. There's almost none in normally furnished rooms. Which is why I advise against special acoustical treatments of rooms except for really problematic setups (Mark?). . .joke.
And to address Ken's point, it's true, the goal of all this equipment and loudspeakers is a "plausible illusion", which Axiom speakers and decent electronics (I'm not talking of any of the tweaky tube gear) are able to do much of the time. The more neutral the speakers and the electronics, and the better the source recording is, the better the illusion.
Regards,
Alan
