My hi-fi journey began when I realised that some music seemed to be coming from a corner on the upper right hand wall rather than from between the speakers. if you try to solve the same problem, here are some of the things you will do or realise...
You will measure every distance in your room when you start working on speaker positioning and room acoustics.
The stereo soundstage is real. It is, however, fragile. You really do have to be in the right place, and not move around a lot.
For a given room, there's only one right place for the speakers to be, and you have to keep moving them around until you find it.
You will re-arrange the furniture in your room (I'm assuming you live alone or have a Room Of Your Own) so you can set up the Magic Triangle with your speakers and listening position.
You will download a dB meter app.
Having the speakers in phase is real. In phase, the sound comes from between the speakers. Out of phase, there's nothing in the middle, and the sound comes from between each speaker and the nearest wall.
You have a dominant ear.
Sub-woofers improve the sound of classical recordings.
Room reflections are a real thing, which is why the Magic Triangle is a thing.
Of course the people marketing expensive room treatment panels and insulation are going to say that "soft furniture and carpets are not good enough".
Acoustics as an engineering practice does not apply to "small rooms", which, unless you live in a mansion, yours will be.
As for that stuff about wires... comes from telecommunications, which uses frequencies several orders of magnitude higher than hi-fi, when stuff like insulation capacitance matters. At hi-fi frequencies the effects are undetectable.
If you think that worrying about noise from computers via the USB is silly, plug a laptop into your Boss Katana via the USB control, and turn the channel from "Clean" to "Crunch" or even "Brown". Convinced? I was. The same goes for the Scarlett 2i2 interface.
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