My room is 17x34x9. Built myself from scratch, so I have heard it in every state from wide open (framed up, no sheetrock) to -
sheetrock on walls but not ceiling, and half the room with furniture (long story)
1/2" sound board over sheetrock (walls) and studs (ceiling)
5/8" sheetrock over sound board, room empty, with bare plywood floor
(really, really obvious flutter echo like this)
without this experience its easy to be lulled into thinking things called "room treatments" affect the sound, when in reality every single thing in the room affects the sound and is, technically, a room treatment.
Every. Single. Thing.
Wall to wall carpeting.
MDF light and sound blocking shutters on windows. I live in a very quiet area, basically in terms of background noise I live in the woods. Yet standing in my empty room it is easy to hear the difference when the shutters are closed. Acoustic treatment? Hell yeah.
Solid core door, with weather stripping. Wife thought I was nuts. The door was first hung without a door knob. When she heard how much noise was coming through just the hole when the door knob hole was plugged it was so startling she decided maybe not so nuts after all. Stops sound going out as well. Think you have a dedicated room? Not without a solid core weather stripped door you don't.
OC panels on walls. Moved them around. Real easy to do too much of this. Cut them up, rectangles along the wall to wall and wall to ceiling corners, triangles where the walls come together at the ceiling. Much more effective than on the wall, without creating an overly damped room. Which most rooms wind up being.
Have heard this room with varying amounts of furniture, from nothing but one listening chair without even a rack, components sitting on the floor, to beyond fully furnished with way too much crap piled into it. Every single thing you put in the room is a room treatment. The less, the better.
Tube traps, tried em. Big one, huge one, more than one, lots of locations. Tube traps are so useful, mine is hanging from the ceiling in my shop. Nothing kills the table saw whine like a tube trap. Best use for one yet.
A much better "treatment" for bass? Distributed bass array. The one and only solution to deep, smooth, articulate bass. All else is band-aids.
Last but not to be the least, in fact by far the best of all: Synergistic Research HFT, HFT-X, HFT Wide Angle, etc. Nothing else comes anywhere even close. Every single one of these little gems makes a difference you can hear. So effective, moving one even an inch makes a difference you can hear. Excuse me. What's that? Oh. Right you are.
Makes a difference I can hear. You I have no idea. But for me, the improvement in clarity, detail, imaging, and smoothness, dynamics and freedom from grain and glare, all so even and across the board its remarkable, and easy for me to hear. Forced to choose between all the normal treatments and HFT I would throw it all in the dumpster before I'd let my HFT go.
Oh, and this all happened over a period of some 20 years. Some of it pretty fast, some with years between changes. Some with the same components, some with components changing while the room stayed the same. Sometimes even with two systems in the same room. Sometimes with components used in other rooms besides the listening room. Sometimes even able to hear how differently the same speakers sound in this room compared with the more or less normal living room. Not for nothing its been called The Listening Room.
