Or, as my experience and measurements have shown, you treat the room
with some decent bass traps and wall coverings to ensure the treble/bass
balance is correct but no.... that's too much ....???
@erik_squires I used to think that way too. Then I encountered the Swarm, and in looking into the theory behind it, realized that its the elegant approach to a vexing problem- reliably getting the bass right in nearly any room.
Duke didn't invent the idea- and he would be the first to tell you usually, but in this case I beat him to the punch. It comes from a guy pretty well known in audio engineering circles; Dr. Floyd Toole.
So this isn't a cult thing- its just that its an idea whose time has come, and all that's happening here is you've not read up on it. So I suggest you read or look at some of Dr. Toole's talks on YouTube. Here's a good place to start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrpUDuUtxPMNow this link doesn't say anything about a DBA, but it does very successfully show how the bass is so important in the way a speaker presents itself. Take the time to play the whole thing (the intro is done at about 4 minutes).
In a nutshell, you put Dr. Toole down at your own peril. He's one of the top engineers in his field. So- when someone is complaining about bass, no, you don't treat a room with traps because it literally doesn't work- although prior to running a DBA you might think it does. Its not a cult, its science. Don't be that guy who contributes to the death of science- look at how Dr. Toole developed this.