Cool.
* In high-end stereo (strictly music), or from a front end analog rig or from a digital one or both; you have:
- A pair of high resolution loudspeakers (full range).
- A stereo preamplifier without tone controls.
- A separate phono preamp.
- A turntable with an anti-vibration platform base.
- An Open-Reel-Tape deck (R2R).
- A separate DAC.
- A separate CD/SACD transport.
- A separate power supply.
- A pair of monoblock amplifiers.
- A pair of speaker wires.
- Some interconnects (analog and digital).
- Some AC power cords.
- A room with a view (acoustical treatments).
Everything is minimal and simple. ...And positioned properly.
{Some hi-fi rigs are even much more simpe; it's only analog or only digital.}
________
There are usually no DSP Room correction and EQualization. But few people do use judicious parametric EQ or Dirac Live or EQuivalent.
Some people might also use a digital music server.
And other people might have a high-end analog or digital tuner (SEQuerra Reference or the like).
We don't see any video processor because it is a room strictly for the music purists (dedicated music listeners; active type).
There are no Ethernet jack for Internet streaming, but the music server.
You'll never see a packed AV receiver in that room. No DVD player, no Blu-ray player, no X-Box game console and control, no PS3.
...No mickey mouse CD player, no Cerwin Vega or Polk speakers, no Surround Sound Processor either.
Some people might use a subwoofer or two though, for that first octave (16Hz to 32Hz).
Nothing has to be expensive, but just good solid audio engineering; simple and efficient design. ...Well built and implemented and working in good synergy. The less the more there you are, you with he music, the musicians, live.
Features? What features, the apps they put in your receivers and BR players? ...That room is another room, for movies.
...For processing, for DSP, for streaming movies, with compressed sound. ...With video processors, with HDMI transmission, with USB sticks, with Wi-Fi and wireless Bluetooth and Internet interaction, eighteen speakers and six subwoofers inside a 16x12x8' size room, compact and fully loaded.
Apps by the ton loads, Apple and Microsoft living under the same roof @ the same time, inside the same machine and operated thru your iPhone and android. FLAC, WAV, MK2, AVCHD, ,,, two thousand file formats. ...Even MP3 included, ...Netflix, Pandora, Avatar, VooDoo, Rapdody, .Berlin Philarmonic Orchestra, ...all that jazz and pizzazz. ...Butt kickers under your butt, Sensation Sensor Sound, Pulmonary vascular heart transvestite, mind blowing blood veins crushing bones body parts, brain washing dishes, uncontrolled excavations from under your house, plaster cracking and beams melting, airplane landing @ your front step entrance without even ringing the door bell, setup menus spread over 436 pages under the main menu page for all parameters inside the cockpit, in dB in feet in meters in inches and in plentiful, you can lose yourself very easily for months inside the complex labyrinth that is part of your av receiver or never find your way back home and stay lost forever in space gravitating around the moon in perpetuity, features and setups and menus and configurations and adjustments and mic positioning and mathematical equation and complication of the most precise complex duplex apt residential skyscraper elevation atmospheric multiverse.
I would say that features can alter your space's perception, slightly. ...Like an out-of-state experience, where your body goes out of your mind & vice versa.