Great info everyone. Im a pure novice but this is my take Bought some towers with active woofers (paradign founders 120h)They sounded great in the store. Got them home and was disappointed in the bass. They are in a multi purpose room with alot of hard surfaces. I added a thick area rug and some panels from GIK and holy sh....what a difference. Huge improvement! Went to axpona and after hearing all the remarkable systems I'm still pretty damn proud of mine. Room treatments are huge. I need to post an updated picture of my system as it has changed a lot.
If you have a nice system why do you really need room treatments?
Yeah you may need an absorption panel if your room is completely open, ie. No rug or furniture, ie just lonely single chair. But if your system can't cut it in any room then it's a system problem and you should be able to discern a good system regardless of the room. Unless you put it on the roof of your apartment building but the Beatles seemed to have survived that effort
I think people go nuts with all this absorption acoustical room treatment stuff and it looks kind of awful. Once in a while you see a really cool looking diffuser panel and I would definitely want one. But to have a system that works really well without any of the acoustical panel distractions is a wonderful thing.