room treatment, where do you start?

I recommend getting advice from someone other than the guy selling the room treatment.

Because of the physics of soundwaves and the dimensions of residential rooms, most rooms can benefit from room treatment, especially bass trapping. Although I can understand people like Elizabeth who may not like the aesthetics of room treatments (some can be made to look better than others if you get creative), this does not mean her room could not benefit from treatment -- it just means that she chooses aesthetics over getting better sound, which is fine if that what works for her and may be a perfectly reasonable choice (after all, in the real world there are always tradeoffs).

Rrog's comments seem to imply that room treatments are often not beneficial. While all rooms are different and some may need more or less treatment than others, most experts in acoustics believe that most rooms can benefit -- again, this goes back to physics and room dimensions. It may be that one of the best systems someone has heard has been in an untreated room, but what that does not say is whether it could have sounded even better with treatment.

I am very grateful for the others on this forum who directed me to try room treatments. I had good sound before, but after getting some broad band asbortion panels that help even out the frequency spectrum the sound is now great, and I had no idea what I was missing.

Edge22, I think what Elizabeth is saying is her room treatment consists of furnishing and window treatment and there is nothing wrong with this approach. Even if you use commercial acoustical products furniture and window treatment should be taken into consideration anyway.

As for me, I have used room treatment for over 20 years, but only where it is absolutely necessary. I believe "experts in acoustics" have a tendency to over treat rooms and over treating is as bad as undertreating.

I just finished treating my room. I DIY'd it and worked experimentaly and intuitively.
I started with "glare" high frequencies, early reflections. I built 5 1" Fiberglas panels,(fabric covered with speaker cloth). That was a big improvement and encouraged the fabricating of 5 broadband absorbers mounted 3'' away from the wall and Placed around the room (moved many times) until it cleared things up in the mid range and upper bass regions. That encouraged the need to address my old Nemesis, lot's of confusion in deep bass, especially noticeable when driving my system with greater attenuation.

I constructed 2 air-tight 5"deep panels, Fiberglas damped and faced with 1/4" resonating plywood sheet and one with 1/8th" ply to control sightly higher bass frequencies...

I also found it necessary to construct 4 dampers for the wall ceiling interface in areas where I could hear and feel that woolly bass rumble and excessive vibration. For these I used 12" dia Fiberglas pipe wrap 1/2 sections with end caps and pegboard backing (Helmholtz)and of course full front and back fabric covering.

A lot of work to be sure, but the results are stunning.
I had pretty well tweaked myself out. I had addressed hundreds of little things over the many years but I never quite had the clarity of mind to attempt the (the final frontier) the room itself.

I can now drive the heck out my system without negative room interaction, I can hear every bass note clearly, and finally.... a piano sounds like a piano..to say nothing of a massive improvement in staging,specificity, depth, width etc

The research I carried out was all in the Audiogon forums.
I just kept reading stuff and making notes and piecing things together in my mind until I had a kind of map in my head, so I just did it.

Well worth the trouble. My system sounds exciting to me again. I would recommend putting thought and energy into room treatment to anybody.