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Thanks. Useful information in there. Here's another very pregnant White Paper on speakers that I wholly recommend: http://www.kef.com/uploads/files/THE_REFERENCE/REF_White_Paper_preview_path_200514.pdf

Are you familiar with Geddes' work? You could have a go at the first "paper" called Directivity in Loudspeaker Systems http://www.gedlee.com/Papers/papers.aspx

I was addressing Toole's wide-disperion design philosophy. Most domestic room are lightly treated if at all and in such cases wide dispersion is bad in my opinion and experience, more so in these tiny UK sitting rooms than in US king-sized lounges...

You can't confuse normal conversation (production) with playback (re-production). If the cuses were captured by the recording reflection will just create confusion. I have little experience with headphones but I imagine that the best ones will produce very little in the way of reflections. But I agree that an anechoic room would be overkill to the point of making things sound bad. I've listened to both live unamplified and to reproduced music outdoors and it sounds weird.

I listen mostly to classical music and from my experience I would deem a higher bit depth more important than a higher sample rate. What worries me about conversion to 16/44.1 is not losing the very low level information above 22kHz which I cannot hear an my speakers may not reproduce but the distortion introduced by filtering. This is the 3rd movement of Sibelius VC (Batiashvili - Sony 24/96), my high sample-rate recording with the highest frequency content; note that all information above 20kHz is at -90dB or below: Rock-pop, jazz and most other genres are close mic'ed so things get a lot busier at higher frequencies. Even though I do buy some jazz from time to time it's mostly from the 50s and 60s and I prefer not to spend money in High Res recordings of this genre. This is "Night And Day" from Bill Evan's album "Everybody Digs Bill Evans":

I'm sorry to disapoint you but most of you are wrong. I was replying to Rexp. 😉 Regarding Redbook vs. High Res, this is where I stand: I will buy High Res if it's on sale and the price is close to that of the cheapest used CD/SACD version I can find. I won't go into the trouble of ripping the DSD layer of an SACD or the High-Res layer of a DVD-A (I only have one of the latter anyway, and it's a 1960 recording).

If you haven't bough it yet, it's available with 50% off https://www.eclassical.com/labels/bis/beethoven-the-nine-symphonies-2.html?cache=purge

Bright green is -100dB BTW.

I was referring to this image and so was Rexp:

Yes, it's that purple grass on the upper part of the graph. You can't hear purple grass. 😋

They also reduce focus. A naked room is like a room full of mirrors:

Never 'eard of 'im...

It would still be interesting to listen with the TV removed from the equipment stand, just to get an idea of how much difference it makes. I have a small TV and place a thick, heavy coat over it; this makes the sound (even) less tinny/tiring and improves imaging focus, almost as much as propping up the seat cushions to cover/dampen the early reflection areas of the side walls.

These minimalist mic'ing recordings were made by Dorian before it was sold to Sono Luminus. Most sound usually very good and natural to me. I don't listen to a lot of organ music so I am not the best person to ask about performance but Guillou was a highly regarded musician and I really enjoy the Saint-Saens Symphony.