And this.

I believe that puts outside the realm of the audiophile.

I started playing around with room treatments until I realized that I would have to completely rebuild my apartment to get significant gains.

We renovated the basement about 6 years ago and in doing so we included a media room ('HT room' sounds so passe).
Some older pics (sorry for the larger images; photobucket's resize feature doesn't seem to be doing squat):









One thing i definitely wanted was a room to control the sound for two reasons; kids growing up watching movies with friends = loud sound in the rest of the house and secondly, so that we didn't have a room that was hard on the ears (e.g. one of those marble floors, tall ceilings, open concept, lots of echo). I just don't find those kinds of rooms bearable for everyday conversation let alone music or movies or even tv watching. The rooms i do seem to prefer are the libraries and the small bedrooms with heavy curtains and carpet.
I refer to it as 'controlled' echo.

Anyway, we put together that room and i've tested out several different speakers down there; Axioms, Tannoy, Monitor Audio.
All of them sound great.
None sound good in our main living room, a room of echoes.

In brief, my point is that although we spent money on one specific purpose that WAS 6 years ago. We haven't done a thing since. I'm interested in measuring my room acoustically for the sake of curiousity, but it is highly unlikely i'm going to do anything further when it comes to tweaking sound.
I may continue to build the system from a 5.1 to a 6 or 7.1, but that's about it for the sonics.

It was hard for me to give up on that pursuit of perfection. It's something I deal with daily, and music has always been important to me.

But there was a point at which I decided to let go of the pursuit of perfection in this case, and I've been much happier for it.

Hey, I remember that! No pictures of the wine cellar for this thread

Still just beautiful.

I think i put those in another thread, maybe.
The cellar probably looks alot more full now.
I need to get some photo tips from Mark about how to take a shot with such difficult lighting conditions.
That, and i need a wide angle lens.

Yeah, I was really just reflecting on the passage of time. My daughter was 8 when I started posting here and she's in college, now. Your remodel was SIX YEARS ago, and I remember being enchanted by the pictures, then. Before you know it, it will be time to get drunk on Ian's dock again.

Actually it was in '05, so 7 years.
Sorry Tom.
Made you another year older.

I think the next time i drink any PEI moonshine i'll be on Murph's dock. I might stick to green tea at Ian and Amie's.

Just drink more wine so you can fit what's left in a single shot with a prime lens.

One of these days, I'll give up, too.

I realize how ridiculously out of whack my priorities are. So far, though, I've only spent an outrageous percentage of my income on the gear and the media. I'm on the verge of spending on the room, but I'm going into it knowing there's a lot of compromises I'm going to have to make. I will fall short of my dream, but I'm still looking forward to hearing it all in a room that at least has a little more going for it.

I've taken drivers out of cheap polk subwoofers and added poly stuffing to try to tighten up bass response.... it worked a little. Most benefit was in seeing inside a sub cabinet.

For the first bit though, little puff balls were all over the room floor. LOL! Overthinking leads to silly stuff sometimes.