Clap before you buy software

Before any microphone, any software, any panel, stand in the middle of your room and clap. Is there an echo coming back? Then you already have your first measurement, and it cost nothing.

The second test is even easier. Sit with your friends in that room and talk, and notice whether it is difficult to listen to each other. These are basic answers, but they are honest ones, and they tell you whether the room has an acoustical problem before you spend anything.

The same problems that blur a dinner conversation are smearing your soundstage. Early reflections, comb filtering, standing waves piling up bass in one spot and cancelling it in another. Your ears struggle with your friend's voice for the same reason they struggle with the singer's.

People ask me which comes first, the room or the speakers. It is the chicken and the egg, and recently I believe we discovered it was the chicken. Take any speaker into an open field with no walls and it is unlistenable, because it was designed to work with a room, so the room is where the problem starts.

A clap and a dinner will not fix anything. They will stop you buying gear for a problem that lives in the walls.