inexpensive room treatment options

Emily: I have a wall of books behind the speakers (out of necessity). This may not fit into your decor, but it sure sounds good. The shelves are not enclosed (as to not create a bunch of right angle corners) but are of the "standard" type (the little tracks that are affixed to the wall with movable shelf supports). The hardware is painted the color of the wall (White) and the shelves themselves are just White-washed pine and are very narrow so that just the books are mostly visible (wall O' books), not the shelves themselves. I have also tried hanging a large painting on canvas (much easier than the book thing) with good results. We now have a large painting on Masonite hanging from the shelves (ran out of wall space) which does not sound good (too reflective) and needs to be covered by a cloth when listening, so canvas is the way to go. There was talk in another thread of placing a thin sheet of sound absorbing material behind paintings, which is an interesting concept as there is usually 3/4" of space between the wall and the canvas.

I agree with both Sean and Tom in regard to using diffusers on the back wall and withdraw the canvas painting suggestion (unless that is all that you can do). The paintings do however work at the first reflection points on the side walls and offer superior sound (to bare walls) in my setup. When I went back in time (in my mind) I recalled that the addition of either painting on the front wall degraded the sound somewhat (even with a cloth cover). The reason that the painting is where it is right now is because it is the only place that we could find space to hang it. I hope that this is not taken to be sacrilegious, but I enjoy the painting as much as I do the Hi-fi setup.

Metaphysic's: The majority of our art is Haitian and the canvas grain though covered with acrylic paint (except on very old pieces which are oil) is still clearly visible. I disagree that this treatment is not superior to bare wall (dry wall in our case) as I have experimemeted with well over 50 paintings VS bare wall in this room, including having entire walls bared for repair and new paint. This may not be a typical room in that most of the wall space (75%) is covered by books and or art (even the doors).