@sokogear you state
"room treatments can’t fix a terrible room".
Then what can fix it?
All rooms need acoustic treatment whether you think they do or not. Fact. Any enclosed space will have a modal problem and it is this that the treatment addresses.
Anybody serious about the resulting sound should invest in a mic.(cheap) and a program like REW (free) and set about methodically lowering the peaks and filling in the nulls. It's not guesswork, there is a target response to strive for.
In a recent post on this subject I mentioned a mate with a small almost square room with no carpet, only one flimsy drape and very little else. Think tilled bathroom acoustics. Truly dreadful. He has a lot of money tied up and is constantly spending more trying different components. He has a collection of very expensive cartridges that he keeps trying in the hope of improving the sound. All the fine detail the carts. are capable of is simply lost in the mess of sound waves banging around his room untamed. Last time i visited he had Spread Spectrum Technologies amplification and had replaced his Appogees with Maggies.
His sound is thin, has no soundstage, is congested and is dynamically constipated! I one day showed up with a bunch of rockwool panels and placed them mostly in the corners to treat lower frequencies. There was a transformation that totaly stunned him and his wife who I noticed was in tears.
I know that some who read this will think I'm overstating the positive effect there was. It was significant and that was without any measurement. The experiment was merely to show my stubborn idiot mate what was possible.
All rooms need acoustic treatment whether you think they do or not. Fact. Any enclosed space will have a modal problem and it is this that the treatment addresses.
Anybody serious about the resulting sound should invest in a mic.(cheap) and a program like REW (free) and set about methodically lowering the peaks and filling in the nulls. It's not guesswork, there is a target response to strive for.
In a recent post on this subject I mentioned a mate with a small almost square room with no carpet, only one flimsy drape and very little else. Think tilled bathroom acoustics. Truly dreadful. He has a lot of money tied up and is constantly spending more trying different components. He has a collection of very expensive cartridges that he keeps trying in the hope of improving the sound. All the fine detail the carts. are capable of is simply lost in the mess of sound waves banging around his room untamed. Last time i visited he had Spread Spectrum Technologies amplification and had replaced his Appogees with Maggies.
His sound is thin, has no soundstage, is congested and is dynamically constipated! I one day showed up with a bunch of rockwool panels and placed them mostly in the corners to treat lower frequencies. There was a transformation that totaly stunned him and his wife who I noticed was in tears.
I know that some who read this will think I'm overstating the positive effect there was. It was significant and that was without any measurement. The experiment was merely to show my stubborn idiot mate what was possible.