Best room treatment


Good day everyone.  While I’m waiting for my system to arrive I’m turning my attention to treating our not so good 2 story family room that it will be installed in. There are quite a few brands out there. My question is can anyone who has tried the various  brands recommend the ones that work the best for absorption and diffusion. Thank you
ronboco


     I took advantage of GIK's free room analysis about 6 months ago and have continued to be impressed with the results.  I took a few months before I decided on a specific acoustic company to research and educate my self on room acoustics in general.  I used all free on line resources, especially via Google and You Tube.  I found out there's a wide variety in the quality of advice being offered for free on the internet, ranging from poor quality and virtually worthless to surprisingly high quality and valuable. 
     But don't worry, you'll quickly and easily be able to determine which  sources are knowledgeable, experienced, trustworthy and worth investing time in learning from and which are not, it's fairly obvious within a few minutes of reading or listening.   I found this video, interviewing Anthony Grimani, to be especially useful and a good place to begin your edification:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raAyF5ksbkk&t=40s

     This guy has produced other videos that I found interesting and useful.  I suggest you take notes no matter which expert sources you decide to trust and learn from.

Good luck,
Tim

 
Thank you everyone. I’m quickly learning how important it is to get the room as good as you can for the best sound. 
@ronboco, I've bought products from GIK and RealTraps.  They both make excellent products.  They both offer free advice on room treatment.  Just be aware that they are in business to sell products, not to educate potential customers on room acoustics and relevant psychoacoustic principles.  My advice to you is to spend a few months learning about room acoustics before you buy anything.   I didn't do so, and wasted a bit of time and money.  I wasn't going to get my room right based on advice from either one of these companies.  Better, yes.  Right, no.

Understand that 90% of getting a room right is getting the 20Hz-300Hz range right.  Once you do that, finishing the room is rather trivial. 

I'm convinced that the best, and arguably the most cost effective way to get the 20-100 Hz range right is not by using room treatments but by using multiple subs.  Look on the forum for discussions regarding the Audiokinesis Swarm system. 

The best, and certainly the most effective way to get the 100- 300 Hz region right is through optimal placement of speakers and main listening position.   This is not trivial, but it is free, and you will never treat a room at any cost enough to overcome suboptimal placement of speakers and listening position.  You can find guidance on how to do this online.  However I found that a not so well known technique, which is to locate the main speakers 20% of the room width from the side walls, 20% of the room length away from the front wall, and finally positioning the listening position 20% of the room depth distance away from the rear wall works best.  I found this to be optimal in my room via a laborious process using REW measurement.   My experimentally optimized positioning ended up within inches of the predicted optimal positions calculated based on the 20% rule. 

After doing these things, you will find adding commercial absorption and diffusion will readily address the remaining issues, e.g., slap echo, comb filtering, first reflection points,  balanced direct vs reflected sound, and what ever low frequency ringing may remain. 

Read and understand the information on the RealTraps and GIK websites.   If you are technically inclined, install and use REW measurement to provide guidance.  There is a learning curve, but most people are quite capable of catching on to how to use it profitably.  Optimizing a room without measuring is like trying to find a diamond ring that is lost in a dark room.  Adding REW measurement is like turning on the lights.  It will still take some work to get the room right, but it becomes possible for most of us to pull it off.   Good luck!



@brownsfan thanks for the advice. This is definitely going to take longer than I anticipated. I’m not familiar with REW but  will take a look. I’ve heard about the swarming technique and will have 2subs to start. Do you think 2 will be enough? I’m using REL 10 inch which are fairly pricy and adding more wasn’t really in my budget. 
@roboco, Usually, one can do a good bit with two subs.  How much depends upon the room and to an extent on the mains and how low they go.  In my room, I tried using two REL subs and couldn't get to where I wanted to be.  However, I did not elevate either sub off the floor.  Had I known to do so at that time, I almost certainly would have had better results. 

AS for REW, there is a learning curve, but there is a users group forum and one can usually depend upon excellent guidance on set up and use.   I was  advised to utilize REW many years before I decided to do so.  What a mistake.   REW used properly makes everything 10 times easier.