Having the proper balance of direct and indirect arrivals is critical, and one reason why I feel most audiophiles don’t use diffusion behind and to the sides of speakers enough. Too many still focus on dampening alone and that creates a headphone effect devoid of depth.
i agree. to attain that ’proper balance’ is of course, the trick. and it requires that you start out with more energy than you end up needing, so as you do the fine tuning for balance you can reach that perfect balance. in 2015, after i’d been in my dedicated room for 11 years, i took 6 months of messing around to find that perfect balance, and have not touched it since. you can reach that right place and stop. of course, since then i have improved my sources, but my system bones and room has not changed at all since then.
here are some notes i wrote at that time describing my fine tuning process. i’ve posted these before but i think it’s very relevant to this subject. i get deep into the weeds for those interested. and note that all this system tuning had almost a zero cost, just huge amounts of sweat equity and time.
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/almost-free-and-4-inches-the-final-1.17389/
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/almost-free-and-4-inches-the-final-1.17389/page-3#post-314941
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/suck-out-fixed-i-think.18116/
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/suck-out-fixed-i-think.18116/page-2#post-329496