Boomy bass, new amp; harsh treble, tubes

For years my answer to every sound problem came in a box. Boomy bass meant amplifiers, distant vocals meant speakers, and harsh treble meant maybe it was time for tubes. I spent years doing exactly this.

It started the way it starts for most of us. Buy the basic gear and put it wherever is convenient: a secondary room, a basement, a corner of the living room. Then the problems appear, and the more experienced you become with your system, the more the details annoy you.

Why? Because nobody tells you the room is a component, and probably the most important one. Every one of my symptoms had the same address: the walls, the corners and where I had put the speakers. A new amplifier cannot move a standing wave, and new speakers cannot remove a reflection.

The audio industry wants you to upgrade your gear constantly, and that loop suits it perfectly. The smartest listeners improve the room first, because the gear serves the music, not the other way around. I learned that order late, and every component I bought before it was a fee for the lesson.

The symptom was in the speakers. The cause was in the room, and the room was never on sale.