$1,000 to spend on room treatment....

While I am gathering cost/option info for treatment, I must say that Stehno's comments start making sense.
- I moved my speakers only a foot / half a foot in both directions and moved my listening position about 2 feet as well and adjusted my existing panels for reflection points. 30% improvement right there. The room may be twice longer than the old one, I do not need to seat 13 ft away from speakers or 18ft away from front wall.
- My carpet is thin and synthetic so it is pretty much the concrete floor that shows (sounds). I borrowed our living room thick cotton rug and the difference was substantial, 10%
- I have about no furniture at all in this room beside an Ikea wood-frame chair, not much absorption. I moved in our guest room sofa and it did reduce the echo quite a bit, another 10%.
At this point, it is an OK room, no more but no less (heard audio show rooms that sounded worse).

So, I think I am opting for the following way of spending my $1,000:
- a thick cotton rug + a sofa for $500(yes, it won't be top quality but it is a dedicated room so who cares)
- $350 in prefinished bass treatment + a few more panels for ceiling/wall intersection *4 - Bryan at sensiblesoundsolutuions.com is very helpful.
- $150 of fabric to make this pretty(ier)

I guess it is all in balancing money between treatment and furniture. Placement is free!

Beheme, you should not consider this the end but the beginning.

Personally, I'm a little slow at making adjustments in my own system as it took me 9 months to find the 'ideal' speaker location. I've not moved them in almost two years and I'm sure I still don't have the optimum placement.

It takes me a bit longer because my speakers are sitting on Star Sound's Audio Points and my speakers are about 145 lbs. each. And believe it or not, there is a very real and very audible difference every time I move my speakers as it literally take 6 to 8 days for the Audio Points to properly settle back in or break in all over again with their connection to the floor. So with these 3 things, I'm always hesitant to move my speakers or my racking system.

Again, you only have a 7 ft ceiling, hence the greater the opportunity to reflect off the floor, then to the ceiling.

I'd like to suggest the thickest carpet pad underneath the thickest rug/carpet.

Keep moving the speakers around a few inches every few days to find an even more optimal location.

I don't know what speakers you have, but if your open to placement suggestions, I'd like to recommend this as a starting point:

Locate the speakers 5 1/2 ft. from the wall behind them and
2 1/2 ft. from the side walls. (All measurements are from the front/dead center of the woofer driver).

This should give you about 8 ft between the left and right tweeters.

Move your chair so that your ears are no further than 9 1/2 ft from either tweeter. This will give you a slight nearfield listen which usually is ideal anyway.

Toe the speaker in toward the center so that the tweeter axis crosses right in front of your nose.

If your rug leaves bare floor exposed anywhere in the front half of the room, throw some big cushions on the floor in the corners behind the speakers, and throw some cushions, pillows, or comforters/blankets (throw not folded) on the other exposed bare floor spots in the front half of the listening area (from the chair to behind the speakers).

You might even loosely spread out some thicker blankets on the floor to assimulate a thicker pad/carpet between the speakers and listening chair triangle.

Uppermidfi may consider this overdampening and he'd be right. But I'm just trying to offer a suggestion to demonstrate what your room might sound like if you had thick wall-to-wall carpeting and carpet padding.

Who knows, if you try these things and post saying this experiment brought a dramatic improvement, maybe uppermidfi will buy one of my racking systems. :)

One clarification I should make regarding my previous post. When I stated that the room's acoustics and treatments only account for perhaps 20 - 30 at most for a system's sonics, I also made that statement with certain assumptions or givens. Thick carpet padding and wall-to-wall carpeting is one of those givens.

Hope this helps,

-IMO

I'd love to buy one of your racks but what will I do with my Star Sound rack then???

Well, uppermidfi, I have a suggestion or two but Robert at Star Sound may not appreciate it. :)

Actually, Star Sound is an excellent company with true performance-oriented products. You may have noticed that I use their Audio Points everywhere on my racks. In fact, my racks are essentially designed around the Audio Points.

-IMO

Stehno, I bought a thick wool rug yesterday and with speakers 5ft and 2.5ft from walls, my test CD shows some pretty good response except for the bump at 200-250 Hz that some bass absorber should help with. I relocated my panels and I must admit that some work and $150 on a nice thick 6'*9' Ikea rug moved me 70% into the right direction. Will continue and eventually post pics so anyone can send tips about panels. Next 2 panels will go on the ceiling for sure.