Comment: yes, room acoustics matter (Score 1) 468
Alan Parsons says I do think in the domestic environment, the people that have sufficient equipment don’t pay enough attention to room acoustics.
Agreed, maybe people without a dedicated room or who are renting feel limited in what they can do, but it makes a big difference.
If you have small or "bookshelf" speakers, put them on rigid stands. Read up on speaker positioning; get some test signals off the web and really well-recorded music you're familiar with; then play one channel at a time while someone moves that speaker around (and you try out different listening positions); then adjust both speakers to get a good stereo spread. Use rugs and drapes to absorb first order reflections off the floor, side walls, and rear wall.
I paid Rives Audio to consult on my room layout, they suggested firing across the room instead of along it, putting sound deadening panels on the rear wall, using bookshelves to break up the side wall reflections etc. Money well spent. Meanwhile despite instant worldwide friction-free distribution, artists don't make enough from recording sales to pay for Alan Parsons and wind up making crappy home recordings or taking rough mixes from live gigs.