Room correction room system vs ears….

I tried using absorption on the front wall in my prior home and current listening room and did not like the dulling, lifeless effect.

On the front wall (behind speakers), diffusors tend to work much better than absorbers. I have about 65% of my front wall surface coverage using GIK Alpha 4a (1d). diffusers (even thicker, the Alpha 6a 2d) work very well on the back wall (behind the listening position). I have a combination of absorbers and diffusors on my side walls, and absorbers only on ceiling.

“On the front wall (behind speakers), diffusors tend to work much better than absorbers”

+1, @thyname 

That’s been my experience as well. I have a combination of diffusers and absorbers strategically installed in my room. 

I assumed that rear ports were for low frequency but just found in my room the high frequencies sounded flat when I had the an absorption panel right behind the speaker. 

@kota1 I know what you mean.  I was at a high-end dealer a while back and the room had absorptive panels all around and the music just sounded dead and over damped.  Very interesting about using diffusive panels behind speakers — learn something new every day. 

im wondering if I simply messed around and found the sweet spot without a room correction system how much of a difference this would make. I’m far from savvy with audio and try to keep things simple for my simple brain, so, on a scale of 1-10 how much difference would I percieve by splashing out on a room correction system?

• If the room is troublesome then the room correction would make a big difference.
• If there is passive absorbers and bass traps then the effect of a s/w correction is less.
• Ideally one would do both
• Much of the problem is in the lower frequency room modes.

There are also the Dirac systems, which do impulse response and phase correction… so one can envision them as doing some EQ of the room, and some EQ of the speaker.

@thomastrouble are you talking about:

1. Room correction and frequency EQ?
2. Or impulse response EQ 

Same thing happened to me with absorption panels on front and rear walls-dead sound, lost dynamics and all interest in the music.  Acoustic Fields sold me 8 large panels which even a pair on either front or rear walls killed the sound.  I prefer the SR HFTs which diffused the sound with live sound remaining.  Only the side walls and ceiling have absorption (well, the carpeted floor too with 106 oz.plush).