Nobody judges a driver without its cabinet

What most audiophiles refuse to accept is that the room is a component. Not an accessory and not the background, but a component, and probably the most important one. Every other box on the rack plays through it.

Imagine it as the cabinet around your speaker drivers. Nobody would hear a driver lying on a table and judge the speaker from it, because the cabinet shapes everything the driver does. Your listening room is exactly that cabinet, for the whole system.

Yet that is how most of us judge speakers. We hear them in a dealer's room, take them home to another, and blame the speakers or the amplifier for the difference. In theory the room is responsible for over 50% of what you hear; in my own rooms over the years, the differences were staggering.

So when I judge a speaker now, I judge the speaker and the room as one instrument. Position comes first, because moving a speaker costs nothing, and treatment second. Only then do I allow myself an opinion about the box.

A driver without its cabinet is a part. A speaker without its room is a guess.