I suppose it is time for me to rant.
I think egenmedia is right. The dimensions and design of the room are most important when it comes to bass. I think length vs width should be at least 2 to 1 and width vs height again 2 to one or better. Leave the back wall open. In my house the back wall opens to the kitchen and a hallway. The kitchen then opens to the dinning room. The nearest full wall is 80 feet from the Hi Fi. All the walls including the interior ones have 2 X 6 studs covered in blue board and two coat plaster. Construction glue was used under the blue board but I can not remember what kind. That was almost 30 years ago. The Quietrock does look like an interesting product. If I were ever to build another house I would give it a try. With my system set up like it is there is no nodal behavior that you can consistently measure but there is a lot more to it than the room. One of the best ways to deal with room acoustics is to have speakers that do not throw energy all over the place. Horns and dipole linear arrays have the most controlled dispersion. I personally prefer dipole linear arrays for everything above 125 Hz. They throw very little energy to the sides, up or down and what bounces off the front wall is easily controlled with absorption devices. In order for an array to be linear down to 125 Hz it has to be taller than 10 feet or butte right up to the floor and ceiling. So, in an 8 foot tall room you need 8 foot tall dipoles. ESLs are perfect in this role. The same applies for bass except the array needs to be on the floor right up against the wall into the corners and each driver must be no more than 5 feet away from the next.
I have read many assumptions about "room control" from people who have little extended experience with it or really understand what it is all about. Room control is really not room control. You can not change a room's modal behavior by monkeying around with frequency response. It is digital speaker control. The benefits are that you can digitally equalize your left and right speakers so that they have dead flat and exactly the same response curves as a starting point. Then you do the same for your subwoofers as well as supply the crossover and sinc them in time and phase with your satellites. In doing this the computer is taking into account any frequency response interaction between the speaker and the room in their individual location. No two speakers are identical. No two speakers occupy the same location in a room. Any frequency response differences between channels will muddy your imaging. Once everything is flat you can institute changes that you find beneficial. At normal listening levels I like the treble rolled off so that it is down 6 dB at 20 kHz.
I find flat is too bright. All the processing is done 48/192 and essentially distortionless particularly in reference to anything you might do in the analog domain. But, you can not fix a bad room with digital speaker control. You can manage it to a degree with the right speakers and acoustic treatment but it is always going to be a bad room.
It is absolutely not true that the effect of speaker control can only be advantageous at the listening position and egregious everywhere else.
The benefits are heard throughout the room. Many current systems take measurements at several places in the room.
There are many other advantages of digital system management and speaker control.
Having lived with it for 20 years. I will never be satisfied without this capability. I can instantly remove the sibilance from any recording, bring the treble out in a dull recording and neutralize fat bass. I have programmed dynamic loudness compensation. The tonal balance remains the same regardless of volume. You can make your system sound however you want. You can not get the absolute best bass without it but you still have to have the right speakers and room to get there. You can not get the best imaging without it but you still have to have the right speakers and room. If you have the right speakers and room and are willing to put in the effort to learn how to manage this (steep learning curve) you can make some very appreciable improvements in your system's performance. That includes the analog side of things as well.
If you want to be a digital phoebe and shoot yourself in the foot that is fine also but don't dis it until you have spent at least a year with it. If you are making negative comments on a 15 minute exposure you are doing yourself and others a disservice.
