Vandersteen 7 and room treatment

I have pair in woodshop 10 ft ceiling. Have drill press and radial saw behind lathe on left side. Right side have lumber rack. Sound very nice. Fly the richard out.

Yeah… we would need to fly him as he ain’t Irish, and it is likely 2x 500 miles from Hanford.

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Thank you for the wonderful advice. Sorry I disappeared for a bit. Pulling major grandpa duty. My son and I will be driving up through Tierra Amarilla to retrieve the speakers next week. Beautiful drive through to mountain passes. I will be heading over to the vandersteen forum in the meantime

Better than the speakers in a treated room looking out of ABQ, would be in front of a window in the more alpines or north NM… 😎

I’m tempted to clear the room of all the treatment and see what kind of sound I can get just by tuning the speakers.

The treatments that do bass are usually thick, or they are Helmholz resonators, bass traps, etc.

The thinner treatments on walls usually kick in at 100 or 200 Hz on up. So one either using things like the Vandy subs with tuning pots, or a DSP based like MiniDSP or Lyngdorf for the < 200 Hz region.

And using something like REW to get decay times and see what the modes are can help to try and get the treatments to address the problems. And also seeing the early reflection peaks,

Usually when one talks about whether active or passive methods are superior it is black-n-white argument. The best systems usually use passive methods, and layer in some active controls to get the rest of the way.

An example would be active cancellation in a headphone.
We can reduce the SPL by 15-25 dB passively with earmuffs.
If we tried to do that at 20dB actively we would need to be within 1% (or maybe it is 3% if we are doing 10log10 versus 20log10). That gets hard to do.
If we are within 10%, then we can get 10dB pretty easily, and that 10dB layers on top of the 15-25dB of the passive.

Basically I think that you will want some of your treatments to stay, and corner treatments may change to bass treatments. But some measurements might help to work through it. And I doubt that the treatments are helping a lot in the bass, but they might.

My son and I will be driving up through Tierra Amarilla to retrieve the speakers next week.

FYI: The donut munchers in Southern Co have little tolerance for speeds over the posted limit.

Now you guys have done it. Almost all are guilty. I see you on the Vandersteen forum, encouraging me to take a peek and I’m up til 3:30 am. I love the passion, humor, and style many of you share. The critical observations and advice have deepened my anticipation. It’s fun being an old man this excited about something other than my grandkids.I first heard Vandersteen model 2’s fresh out of the box in 1977. Couldn’t afford them at $900 on a social worker’s salary. Finally purchased a used  pair of 2 CE‘s in 2000. Owned them for many years before acquiring the Chapmans, who know they are probably going to be replaced and are sounding spectacular with some recent system and placement changes. The months-long factory renovation in 2021 had already elevated their performance and my pleasure to unprecedented heights. 
I believe I’m going to remove all 14 traps and panels and engage in a long process of multi-factor trials, beginning by the book. I better pick up some furniture slides. No idea what I’ll do if I end up with a bunch of no longer needed panels.  I know I’m not going to be able to just plunk the 7’s down and sit and listen for the rest of my life. A luxury dilemma 

Personally I would start with all the panels in place, as you already know the room.
Then remove panels one by one.

Measurements with REW might be able to show a time domain comb, and keeping the early reflections low is usually better for imaging.

Whatever method you use will be a lot of trial and error, or trial and measurements along with listening.

It could make a good study though.