u/Leboski

I recommend buying a calibrated microphone like the umik-1 so you can make good measurements. The in room response will show you all the problem areas. Keep on measuring as you make small adjustments to the placement over and over again until you achieve a decent looking room curve.

Not sacrilegious if you just limit it to the bass frequencies. Cutting bass modes is always a good thing. Messing with 500 Hz and above is a bit of a wash and in many cases doing more harm than good.

Try level matching your speakers, if you haven't already.

It depends on the particular album and album mix. If you want to listen to a classic album from the 70s or prior, it's generally a better listening experience on vinyl. 10x so if it's a mono album. I don't care if you have the world's best digital sound system; the listening experience is generally inferior to a proper turntable+tonearm+mono cartridge. But we also have to acknowledge that there's much more hassle involved before you get to the needle drop. Because of our monkey brains, the friction actually improves the listening experience. But not everyone wants to make pizza from scratch every time they feel like eating pizza.

https://www.explorefall.com/states/massachusetts

It's the same reason you want to isolate subwoofers from the floor, but to a much lesser extent. The floor could act as a big speaker baffle and increase distortion.

That may be so, but truehd isn't an option for the vast majority of albums you would care to listen to let alone purchase.

It happens. The mix will be pretty much the same. But each medium has its own quirks so the mastering could vary a bit based on how the mastering engineer tackles the format requirments.

Consider the Origin Live Aurora. For the cartridge, get a Hana that fits your budget. If you like having a lifter, install an aftermarket device like the Audio-Technica automatic raiser.

Bass is frequently brought up because it's where rooms are most vulnerable. Poor sounding bass will worsen the mids and the highs. Whereas treble is directional and will sound more or less the same in every room, bass is omnidirectional so the room is contributing half of the final result. Therefore each room will have a different bass sound depending on the room size and shape and construction. When shopping for speakers, I assume the bass is going to sound mediocre because the best speaker placement for stereo is never the best placement for bass; you're going to inevitably get wild standing waves. To attain great sounding bass, you'll need plenty of absorption panels, subwoofers, and maybe some kind of digital room correction. Therefore, I don't sweat the details about how the stereo speakers' bass performance or how low they can go because a good portion of the bass is a lost cause and will need subwoofer support. A bigger room will need a bigger subwoofer and multiple.

That doesn't dampen the vibration. If your goal is isolation then I suggest adding some rubber footers.

You added rigidity, but you still need some kind of compliant material in the chain.

I think people forget that it's sometimes not enough to have good ears and good equipment and a good listening environment. When dealing with comparisons that are super subtle, like dac comparisons or cable comparisons, you also need to have a bit of ear training to be able to identify what to focus on. So this is where A/B tests can fall apart. You could have perfect vision but not be able to tell the difference between a fake Rolex and a real Rolex.

Give OmniVoice a try. I haven't found anything else that comes close in speed and realism.

https://github.com/fastfinge/omnivoice-sillytavern-extension

https://github.com/diogod2r/OmniVoice-FastAPI

Get the isoacoustic iso stands that can go up to 8.25" high.

Every room is going to be different but the answer is whatever distance that produces the most even bass response.

Roon is the best. Give it a trial run. Then just get the lifetime license and don't look back.

It's rare to see such a tasteful and aesthetically pleasing arrangement. Well done.

The spikes help with rigidity which is pretty important. However, spikes provide zero isolation. You still need to put footers made of compliant material underneath your gear to achieve some isolation.

When shopping for speakers, bass extension is the least important factor to consider because the actual bass you hear will vary wildly from room to room and where it's placed in the room. You're going to have big standing waves so much of it will be a lost cause. I always defer to the subwoofer to cover up any bass shortcomings.

The measurements are limited in that they mostly represent how they perform in a perfect lab environment. But we live in the real world with lots of irregularities and complicating environmental factors. There's also the matter of psychoacoustics which is still a growing research area. Measurements do a poor job of showing a loudspeaker's timbre, imaging, and soundstage performance.

Vikingur Olafsson's Bach Goldberg Variations is a standout Classical release. For jazz piano trios I recommend various albums from Yoshiko Kishino and Chihiro Yamanaka.

I agree with his sentiment that the subjective experience is the end all be all. Measurements only represent a narrow slice of the physical world and are useful reference points for the manufacturers. But if you're in this hobby as a consumer, the measurements are not as useful and can sometimes set you in the wrong path if you're unable to experience the gear in person.

The upmarket DAC's seem to have a better handle of the time domain which influences how well instruments are outlined and how the soundstage is presented.

Everything from 300 Hz and above can be left alone. You need to focus on improving everything below 300 Hz, particularly the major dips. Start by making adjustments to the speaker positioning a foot at a time to hopefully make the dips less drastic. At the very end you can cut any peaks easily with PEQ. All of this would be easier if you added a subwoofer or two to the system.