How do you know what room treatments to use?

My converted bedroom (10x9x8) sounded like cr*p. It was just awful. I called GIK and sent them pictures of my room. They made several suggestions which I incorporated into the room. It was transformative. My room, despite its dimensions, now sounds very, very good thanks to GIK. I recommend them highly, not only for their good advice, but for their excellent quality and affordable products.

My room treatment with passive materials is homemade and not ideal but work well... I use only my ears to create it...(total cost under 50 bucks)

But my active device controls of the room acoustics, is totally astounding and cost little more but anyway peanuts....

In acoustic there is 2 complementary ways: the room treatment with passive materials, and the active controls with resonators and schumann generators grid all connected....(S.G. for 10 bucks and i own 10 in my grid). You can use a computer to calculate the best nodes in the room where to put the materials, but you must use your ears to synchronise the active controls device grid.... It is easy tough....

Except for some totally acoustically engineered room (very costly), active device controls of the room is the way to go for most of us....

Nobody will believe that but i say it anyway and if you want to know read my thread....

No one it seems know about this and nobody use these active device controls that free the sound from the room obstructive topology or furnitures and erase the speakers from the sound projected 3-d presence.....

My last control device cost me 15 dollars and it is the more powerful....If i say what it is, some will call me nuts.... Then if someone is curious it is in my last posts..

All aspect of sound are modified by active controls : dynamic, imaging, soundstage tonal accuracy, higher frequencies extension, bass extension etc....

Ok my duty is done....

A last word, the acoustical embedding of an audio system is more powerful for S. Q. than most upgrades, speakers included, and it is the more powerful of the 3 embeddings controls....

Nobody can listen to his speakers, we listen the room, because our ears are in the room not in the speakers enclosure and the sound waves we listen to is a complex integration of the direct waves and the reflected one .... The active device control work on this complex wave by resonance modification and amplification of the direct wave and synchronization between the direct and reflected one... This is my explanation and not science.... I know little but i am creative and i know how to listen....Anyway my results are amazing and cost peanuts....

Someone not knowing that about acoustic dont know really his own audio system ....

i know mine.....

:)

I started with GIK full range absorbers at my first reflection points and that helped tremendously.  I then added quadratic diffusers to my rear wall and to my left and right.  I temporarily have some diffusers in my mid wall corners for the bass until I get more absorbers. I also want absorbers for my front wall and front corners. My virtual system has pictures of the room. 

Room EQ Wizard 

Someone not knowing that about acoustic dont know really his own audio system ....

i know mine.....

My point exactly. Unfortunately involves a lot of hard work. Much easier to buy something, push a button, pay for a readout, trust authority (who really these days can still trust authority???!?!? and yet they do!). Not realizing that as hard as it is to understand room acoustics its even more work to understand microphones and measurements.

There was a whole long thread recently where the difficulty and complexity of measuring something as seemingly simple as output level is way harder than anyone thinks. Yet they turn around and think they can push a button and a readout will tell them how to treat their whole room.

Oh well. At least a few of us get it.