Hi Mike - I have viewed your system many times but never commented. It goes without saying that the system and particularly the room are first rate. The story of your bass suckout, and the measures you took to "fix" it, is harrowing - the stuff of nightmares. Also, something out of a comedy of errors. I'm sorry you had to go through it, and that it took so long to figure out.
The lesson I take away from your story has less to do with perception and more to do with attribution. As you point out, your perception of the problem was correct, and it was confirmed by measurements. But your attribution of the problem (to the room) was mistaken, and it was that mistaken attribution that caused so much anguish. I have some thoughts that may help with your grieving process...
The audible characteristics of audio systems are emergent, in the sense that they are the result of complex interactions among a multitude of systems components (including the room). There's lots of evidence that people are generally lousy at making reliable attributions about emergent characteristics. The brain is not organized to easily understand emergent characteristics or the complex systems from which they arise, because the role they played in our cognitive evolutionary history was minimal. So, FWIW, you made a mistake that people make, have always made, and will continue to make for the foreseeable future. So forgive yourself.
Having said that, I can't believe you tore apart your beautiful room. :-)
