In this video I’m joined by Nate Bagalos from Kali Audio, and we get into the real reason your speakers can sound absolutely sh*t in your room: placement, decay, and reflections. Before you spend money on treatment or start blaming the monitors, I walk through why it costs literally £0 to move your speakers and why taking a full day to experiment (even just with your ears) can save you months of counter-translation. We talk about best-practice starting points like the quarters rule, why “against the wall” can be more predictable (even if it’s predictably problematic), and why symmetry is a great baseline—but not something you should worship if an asymmetrical position simply works better. Then we get into treatment with intent. It’s not just about chasing a pretty squiggly line—frequency response and decay are tied together, and what you want is balance. Nate and I talk about sensible decay-time targets, why the worst rooms we’ve been in often have the most treatment, and how an over-dead room will mess with your decisions. I also explain how I use Room EQ Wizard (waterfall/RT60/spectrogram—choose your poison) to actually see what’s going on, and we finish with speaker design fundamentals like directivity and why coaxial 3-way designs can absolutely smoke traditional 2-ways for imaging and translation.