Mainly what I see is audiophiles, from their own experience, and that of acoustic professionals, is that they have added a limited number of panels to fix a perceived problem, usually caused by limited space, and that the majority have been happy with the results.
Oh, you are going to convince yourself that you are happy after spending all that time online reading incorrect information, buying and slapping those things on your walls. And as long as upstanding citizens like you encourage them to think that way, they will be starving their ears for good sound.
The wrong information about room acoustics is so entrenched online that it takes incredible amount of effort to finally shake someone to rethink their assumptions/knowledge. To wit, it took more than 1,600 post in the acoustic thread on ASR to get that to happen:
Hmmm...not sure how to start this post. I wish I had better writing skills and knowledge of English. Please bare with me and let me try.
I feel like a Neo in Matrix where @amirm is Morpheus and he's offering a blue pill in one hand (absorption on the side walls) and a red pill in the other (no side wall treatments). After all Amir's efforts in this thread, I decided to say fuc*@ and take a red pill. LOL.Well after I got unplugged from Matrix and first puke, I was sitting in my listening chair in disbelief at what I just heard. I was not sure what to expect but I prepared myself for the precise imaging to be gone or at least affected to some degree and to be bothered with extra brightness. To my surprise, imaging was still there, the sound stage was bigger and (for lack of a better word) the overall presentation was more natural. Oops, Gulp, what now?
Look, I don't care if you go and spend $2,000 on a USB cable. That is not going to degrade your sound. But listening to people online about acoustic science will absolutely lead to screwing up the sound in your room. Don't do it. Don't listen to these people.