Room Treaments - Where To Begin...

Here is the before and after, as you can see the bass was way too loud. Look at the dip between 200Hz and ~350Hz. 

Some could argue that I need more energy from 300Hz down, I will try new tubes to lower the brightness  and see what the tubes do

The best thing you can do, is to very precisely place your speakers by listening and using REW.

Take a look at the Before and after, with absolutely no room treatment. This living-music room is the most difficult room to make music sound good, vaulted ceilings, L shaped lots of little right angle little walls, a fireplace, and a lot of windows and skylights. On top the house is made with wood sticks, plaster walls, the wood floors are suspended, in other words a resonance box.

@erik_squires yes, well I am certainly on board and can attest to it working better, I thought it might be from breaking up the bass energies. But on this I am still discovering what to do, well, at least I'm reading and muddling through it.

@fleschler about activated carbon filters, yeah I've used the Acoustic Fields QRD17 plans for four diffusers, and I'm deliberating building two or possibly three of their low frequency absorbers (I might even just break out the cash and buy them instead).
How much did you use? What sized room, and impressions?
I'd really like to know, sorry if I'm getting personal.

My wife and I both heard an improvement and curiously mostly in the lower end, where it seemed like my speakers finally had some depth in some bass.

Yes!  I have written about this often.  Clean up the mid/treble and the bass rises from the depths. It's amazing how this can transform the sound of smaller speakers. It can make them sound huge.

But but ….. it’s all analog and built into the speaker

They said it would be ok 😅

But I shouldn’t have said no other room treatments. I’m lucky that we have large openings to adjacent rooms at both first reflection points. And my wife pushed for American Clay on the walls. It’s literally clay and it’s the best cure for slap echo I have ever heard. We did the ceiling too.

Now nothing except an optimal listening position an Vandersteen 5a carbons with the 11 band equalizer tuned to the room

An EQ??? Turn in your audiophile card immediately!! (Being sarcastic)

+1 on Jim Smith’s book Get Better Sound. 

In particular how to pick the best listening position but there is a ton of other useful info (most of what is discussed here).

I used to have a bunch of tube traps. Now nothing except an optimal listening position an Vandersteen 5a carbons with the 11 band equalizer tuned to the room. Much better looks and sound.

@gnoworyta   Let me help you cut through the muck here - - I've been exactly where you are at, and it can be overwhelming and confusing (see the dozens of different opinions here; plus your own quandry just not knowing where to start):

After two years of reading, studying, interacting with acoustic engineers, and then beginning to make plans for traps and diffusers I thought I needed, I was almost back at square one.  In the end, I was so glad I was PATIENT.  Don't be in a hurry.  Buy once, cry once - - save yourself a lot of time and effort (and unstudied purchases or wasted building of trap designs).   

You must, absolutely, measure your room first.   Room measurement will not only tell you which type of treatment you need, but also where to place your speakers (and your listening position as well).

Here is the microphone you need $79...that's all you need. Period.  
Acoustic Measurement Tools: UMIK-1 (minidsp.com)  

Then for REW (Room EQ Wizzard) tutorial, you can learn to hook up the microphone and run the free software.   There are 3 good tutorials for REW that will get you well on your way to treating your room, placing your speakers in the room, etc,   Note:  Ethan Winer at RealTraps will also help you with tutorial links or advice.  He is honest and won't sell you anything by pushing, etc.  

John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum • View topic - How to use REW to analyze the acoustics of your room... (johnlsayers.com)

Take the time to do this first:  despite all the shortcuts recommended in the comments here, the fact is, there are none.  "The Elephant is the Room"

Do this and you will know your room, and you can then research which treatments will mitigate the room problems.  You cannot build or buy traps until you know the problem and its source or location.  This is proper application of a particular treatment product in YOUR specific room by the analysis you've performed.  

Begin patiently by buying (or building) the particular treatment "panels" and don't buy all of them at once.  One step at a time with just a few panels is a simple and much cheaper (and less confusing) way to solve the problem and get excellent results.   In addition, you may find you cannot afford to buy or build all the panels you need; or, you may find you don't want the looks of too many panels.  In this case, you would know where to get the most benefit for your room for the least amount of money (or time and materials), and get the best looking room.  

This process is not that complicated:  just take it step-by-step, approach it systematically and methodically, and follow the science....and be patient.  Forget all the voices.  Just take charge of your room, learn along the way, take your time, and you'll be proud of your room and the results in the end.  Feel free to PM me if you have questions.

@mike_in_nc  Yes, that is the fundamental beginning.   I custom built a room which addressed bass (built-in activated carbon filters).   After your 3 recommended fixes, Shahki Hallographs (unless you have really fantastic soundstage and imaging speakers, then I use Synergistic Research HFTs (or use expensive and bulky quadradic diffusion paneling).

@oregon +1
Yes, The complete guide to high-end audio, it’s a great book.
Chapter 4: How to get the best sound from your room.

 

Hi rixthetrick,

Difficult to apportion a budget as a percentage of total value of your system. I think of it as a case of taking X amount of $ to tame the room's acoustics which then will provide the correct acoustical environment to allow any and all systems to be heard at their optimum level of performance.

The room proportions do make a difference but are seldom found in the real world. The golden ratio or Fibonacci Sequence help with spreading the room modes so you do not get massive build up of certain frequencies. This is seldom found and is not an insurmountable problem. If possible avoid any one dimension being exactly twice or half that of another. So a cube would be absolutely worst case.

Any room, however, can be made to sound good. I made all my bass traps, diffusers and absorbers myself which does not cost that much. I used to visit demolishers and buy the insulation panels for peanuts. Look for Owens Corning 703 or similar.

Start with bass traps which need to be rather large but the divorce is worth it for good sound.  😎   These need to be big, you're dealing with long wavelengths so those dinky little scraps of foam Amazon sells are useless. Google superchunk DIY bass traps for an idea.

Corners are the place for BTs, any corners, the more the better. Usually the 2 front vertical corners are used for floor to ceiling traps but instating them horizontally along 1 or 2 wall/ceiling corners work just as well. This alone will make a very large improvement.

Place absorbers at the first reflection points. As I mentioned curtains, drapes or skimpy wall hangings do not absorb over a wide range of frequencies. Build or buy frames at least 4" deep to act as broad-band absorbers. The OC703 is available in panels 2'x4' so use frames to size or multiples. Panels 4'x6' or 3 panels 4'x2' with a small space between look smart and can be covered in different colour fabric.

A 'cloud' attached to the ceiling is a great way of eliminating the troublesome floor/ceiling bounce and does away for the need of a carpet or rug, though a rug will not harm anything. i helped a mate with a ceiling cloud and fitted an LED strip light around the perimeter on top. With the remote that came with it looked very neat, could change colour and dim to suite.

I am selling the old stone cottage and have abandoned any further work on the acoustics. I use Omnimic to measure which shows a consistently good T60 but also shows a slightly lumpy bass. Based on before, during and after screens that I need one more BT and job done.

Persevere with what you have started. You are clearly DIY capable so go for it and good luck.

Is your stereo in a dedicated listening room, or, living, shared space? 

Sometimes, you must compromise and are limited to what and where you can place things.

Another good all around audio book, which mentions acoustics and treatments is Robert Harleys book. 

You are on the right track!

@lemonhaze such a pity you haven't posted a system page.

Like millercarbon, the best sorted listening room I've sat in and heard music played on a system would be Mike Levine's. In your opinion what percentage of system budget would you expect for a room to come up to the relative performance of the stereo playing in it?

I've been reading where room proportions may matter as much and in some cases even more than just distances between boundaries in a listening room. And if you didn't have the budget to do an entire room all at once, where would you likely start?

Yes, Ethan Winer is a good call. His YouTube videos are interesting and informative. 

I forgot to mention, there is also the forum 'gearspace' formerly known as gearslutz, which has a whole section on acoustics with articles on building stuff yourself and on measuring, which is easier than you think even though I don't know what you think, I think. There is a much larger community of experienced guys and well worth a visit.

Ethan Winer explains it in detail in Part 4 of his book, The Audio Expert. Well worth the read before haphazardly throwing stuff on the walls. His realtraps.com site also has some good starter articles on the subject.

I'm constantly amazed that audiophiles can go on at length about VTA, upsampling, damping factor etc. but when it comes to the most important component, the room, they have little or no understanding. This is forgivable to an extent. Without having heard the enormous improvement attention to acoustics brings to the party it is difficult to conceptualise the transformative result.

All rooms need treatment, without exception. Even the Royal Albert Hall required  some monster upside down 'mushrooms' to kill excessive echo.

The second post you received from member @dill provided you with lots of good info and there is tons more. Obtaining your advice from those links is preferable to getting conflicting opinions from ill informed posters here on the 'gon.

Once you have gained some understanding, which you should relish with glee because this is the only way you will ever get to hear your system truly perform, you will soon realise that guesswork does not enter into the requirements of treatment.

You will understand about wavelengths , how to calculate and how to deal with them. You will also learn that a rug, drapes or wall hangings do very little because they only provide narrow-band absorption. Now I expect someone to counter with 'I just placed a rug between the speakers and it made a huge difference" Well yes of course there will be a small improvement and the comment simply comes from them never having heard what a carefully sorted room sounds like.

The biggest thing happens down low in the Schroeder frequency range where bass energy combines, sometimes creating peaks and sometimes nulls. Bear in mind that a full null means zero sound. I repeat, when there is a null there is no sound, zilch, nada. It's MIA and no, no DSP or equalisation can bring it back. Even a partial null, say 15dB below average, could not be corrected because your amp is not powerful enough and the speaker voice coil would instantly fry.

Above the Schroeder frequency, average about 250Hz you have a reverberant field which can be addressed with diffusers and absorbers. This is important: the smaller the room, the more absorption is needed. The bigger the room, the more diffusion is needed. In practice the average size living room need both.

My direct advice after reading the material @dill provided is to read even more and then buy a suitable mic. for less than $100 and download a free program like REW and get started. Even if you get the professionals in you will at least be able to measure the before and after results and so avoid the possibility of being oversupplied which has happened to a friend of mine when he left it all up to GIK.

Imagine now hearing all the missing details in the bass and the fact that unless you act appropriately things will not change. If you want to go all the way then look into a multi-sub addition which will smooth out the lows even more. Can this bass problem be sorted with multi subs only?  Well yes the extra subs will smooth the room nodes but you still have the issue of overly long decay across the full spectrum.  Looking at this another way:  installing multi-subs will smooth out the bass nodes and the addition of bass traps will reduce the long decay. Win win. Your ability to measure T60 yourself will get you to head of the class.

Have fun.

Listening first is a winner. When I bought our home (because my wife liked it), I tested out the lounge room and it was just terrible acoustically.
The master bedroom 24x15 was immensely better, the echo was considerably less of an issue. We had a smaller storage room that I was going to use, but when my wife suggested we use the bedroom as a dual purpose room, the idea appealed to me.

I’d seen other Agoners system pages, and yeah, many of us do go for a bit of a look at what others are up to in their rooms. I’d seen quite a few who’d put up reasonably cost effective absorption in between the speakers on the front wall.
I’d bought a $200 thick woolen rug from a garage sale and built a big frame for $200 for a fairly inexpensive science experiment.


Surprisingly this worked pretty well, the first reflections off the back wall (sent across to the front wall again) and the back energies from the ports were dealt with in a manner that cleaned up the higher frequencies pretty well. I did hear a cleaner and more revealing sound stage, where spacial information was more cohesive.

So I set about to have a crack at building some of Dennis Foley’s quadratic diffusers, bought the plans and managed through a friend (Kurtis) to find another guy (Paul, we also become great friends) who let me use tools in his cabinet making workshop and I finished the first two QRD17 diffusers (Paul is an audiophile now).

And modified my science experiment rug holder (well essentially that’s what my front wall absorber is) to fit two of these QRD17 on.


There are another two diffusers cut out, yet to be assembled. My wife and I both heard an improvement and curiously mostly in the lower end, where it seemed like my speakers finally had some depth in some bass.

I’ve changed focus for the moment, getting my electronics up off the floor onto a sprung isolation rack is the current project. I’ve only lived in this house a little over two years, so I’m going at it a little bit at a time, while getting out of the mortgage quickly (Dave Ramseying it).

My point is, that doing a bit of research and having a go at something is better than throwing your hands up in the air and not doing anything. A safe bet is to do some absorption and or diffusion on the front wall. I have a plan of attack, and it’s going to be done bit by bit and with listening as I go. I’m reading a lot about it, making informed and "safe bet choices".

You don’t have to break the bank to play around treating your room, read, plan, build and listen. I did mine a bit DIY, my wife is patient, and one day hopefully it’ll all come together as a nice looking, excellent sounding system :-)

A rug, some toss pillows, a throw or two, and maybe a tapestry or two...you do not need hideous looking things hanging everywhere. I use Tannoys with concentric drivers, the toe in is quite extreme, and they are front ported. The room interaction is minimal. I sit approximately 7 to 7.5 feet away from the speakers. They are about the same distance apart. 

oldhvymec,

  Another point to consider. Just what can you get by with in the way maybe slightly opening a window with heavy curtains hanging before it? It could go on forever, but still I wonder. I do have a small coat closet in my listening room packed with the usual stuff. Even that would cause a difference when its door is open or shut. 

  Used to have a set of ceiling tiles Hinged together about the room. Just an experiment, yet the results were undeniable for better or worse depending on placement.

First thing you need to do is to seal all possible acoustic leaks. Imagine that your room is the vessel filled with water, then try to understand where the water could leaked out of the vessel, find that leaking spots and seal it as good as you can…we talking about AC or water pipes walls entering points, cables or electric outlets, windows and doors gaps etc.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

You can do all of this but it is sure makes for a hard listen. IF you don’t vent the room, YOUR ears are going to take all the pressure. The smaller the room the worse it is.. I like to be able to open windows or doors and be able to cover the openings with heavy acoustic curtains. They act like a weir too, they let waves out the openings and the curtains will dampen a certain amount. When the wave hits the walls in the other room and come back very little of the wave makes it back through the opening. The window it’s a one way, the pressure wave is gone..

I’m not into an Infinite Baffle room. I like mine ported and to be able to vary that..:-)

Regards

Thanks dill for the link. I’ll be reading and watching videos for hours to come!

All the best.

JD

Sure:)

surfmuz,

Now there is something that I have never considered. You are correct. Makes me wonder how live outside concerts have to deal with since they can't keep the sound 'together?'. It also reminds that when I was young and playing in a marching band, it could be difficult hearing other instruments as you marched or turned in step.

  Appreciate learning about aspects of a subject not yet considered.

@4krowme 

Soundproofing is not only about to be nice to you neighbors or relatives. Sound is Energy and if you have leak of energy you have nothing to work with using all those panels and fancy tricks. 

🙄

Appreciate your insight. Excuse my lack of knowledge, but if my speakers (Spendor D9.2) are base spiked to carpet, aren’t they already effectively isolated?

No. Not at all. Not that a lot of people haven’t been misinformed into thinking this. The most common false narrative is that a spike is a kind of diode. Or it couples. The people pushing these ideas never can keep it straight and are immune to the illogic of their mutually exclusive theories.

I know this very well by the way having been one of them, thoroughly indoctrinated in this nonsense until the reality of it being BS was proven false by some very profound and obvious listening tests.

Isolation is pretty much only accomplished by springs. Been used in industry, science, engineering, now audio. Not just any springs however. We had one of the biggest loons in the field here hawking "super stiff springs" that were way to stiff to work properly. Consequently giving springs a bad name. Which was his goal. Everything he did was intended to screw with audiophiles.

Anyway, point is springs in order to work properly must be sized to the load. Ideally they will allow free movement in all planes and at a fundamental resonance of about 4Hz. Below that and vibrations will be transmitted to the component, but it won’t matter because only really large amplitude matter then and we don’t hear that low anyway. Above that where we do hear with great sensitivity springs filter vibrations, a lot.

So the trick is to use springs just stiff enough to result in the component bouncing on them at about 4Hz. This is effective isolation.

What happens then is the component still generates its own internal vibrations. But now the only thing vibrating is the component. So vibrations dissipate and die much faster. The result is easy to hear. Lower background noise for blacker background, and much greater detail, together creates a sense of improved dynamics.

On spikes what happens is the component vibrates, the spikes transmit this into the floor or shelf, which now that is vibrating, and like a bell rings right back into the component. Also vibrations travel all through the floor, up the walls to the ceiling, up the rack to the turntable or DAC, tube amp- all adversely affected.

Real easy to get a set of Nobsound springs, only $30, prove it to yourself. Which is what I did. Way better than anything else you will find, at least until you get up to Townshend which are a lot better but also a lot more expensive. Worth it. I always recommend try and learn cheap, proof of concept, then once you know what you’re doing go big if you want big. But you will be surprised how much improvement you will get from a couple sets of Nobsound. Then if you go Townshend, wow, whole other level.

Here's a quick demo using a seismograph showing how speaker energy that goes into the floor comes right back up into the speaker. Notice this is on a concrete floor. So much for the idea concrete is the answer!

50% of the sound you hear is the room and electrical quality. I say that because up to the sheetrock the only thing behind it, is electrical. From the sheetrock out is the actual space. You're going to find that most of what is behind sheetrock is for soundproofing and being a good neighbor. It has little to do with room acoustics. If the room is air tight it is air tight. I like a ported room and the ability vent the room for higher SPL.

Add as much acoustic treatment as you can stand and add your subs. Tune them in . NO MAINS. Now add your mains. (I don't mean remove them from the room either. Just turn them off for sub set up). Now add the mains. Place them, get it right too. Get a tape measure and green painters tape. When your done. DECOUPLE all the speakers and be amazed. Spring, Pods, Air, innertubes, levitation, I don't care.. Decouple all the subs and main speakers. 

By treating the room and addressing vibration control. 50-60% of the sound you hear is pretty clean. LOW distortion. Tweak away... The other 40-50% is recording, source, amps, cables and speakers.

There I said something worth a crap.. :-)

Merry Christmas

Regards

It helps to keep in mind that speaker placement is a huge part of overall room acoustics. As you place speakers, the mid and side channels of stereo (the sounds that make stereo, "stereo") in most cases radiates strongly at side angles and not straight ahead. (Which is why "perfectly symmetrical" is NOT always ideal, based on your room interactions.) This is also why ideal placement can be elusive. Placement is super critical. You may have speakers positioned perfectly for the in phase L and R channels (imaging) and completely wrong for the mid and side signals. Speaker angles and placement is just as important to room interaction (maybe more) as any treatments. 

surfmuz,

  There may be a splitting of hairs here. Let's ask the OP to be more exact about the question or provide more information pertaining to his situation.

 I do see the relevance of your response, as some do want to 'insulate' their listening experience from nearby neighbors.

Straightforward, easy to read: https://www.getbettersound.com/

@4krowme 

no, this is your insinuation, the OP was asking about room treatment not room acoustic, so soundproofing is under the topic and first thing to start with. 

on the issue of spikes vs springs…or ?….. probably best to get a reputable product ( there are many  ) from a vendor that allows returns and listen, tweak and decide for yourself.

I would start w your Spendor dealer. I know a really good one with a great ear, exacting standards and impeccable ethics…not prone to hyperbole but an innovator in his own right…let me know if you need his firm name.

Audiotools is a good start, you can run the RT60 test w a handclap but a popped ballon is better.  Audiotools runs on iphone or ipad. I would not trust the iphone microphone below 120 hz. Audio Control ( Lynnwood, WA make a decent affordable calibrated microphone that can be trusted ). Of course you can get there….eventually..just by listening….you can also wander in the desert randomly looking for water…

Jim Smith’s book - Get Better Sound may also be of use. 

Acoustics is part science, part art and some luck….but my mentors put together great rooms you can hear…in the reference recordings they help create….

Best to you

Jim

tomic601, jwpstayman

Thanks for the responses - I guess what I am saying is that I enjoy my system and have not identified a particular problem - I just wonder if it could be better with some room treatments. P.S. I also have a JL Audio E110 paired with Spendors...

OK - here's the trick... to effectively correct the room acoustics, you have to measure the room acoustics and figure out what needs help.  Simple...  you wouldn't go to the doctor and say "I need medicine" because you know the next question is going to be "for what"?  you HAVE to describe the problem first and foremost.  Get a set of frequencies recorded at the same level, play them back and at least statically measure the room response at the listening position.  Back in the day, that would be a Stereophile test cd and a Radio Shack dB meter... nowadays, you can use your phone instead of the meter and I am sure there are some freebie apps with frequency sweeps.  Measure FIRST, then address the problems.  By the way - GIK may be longer lead times than pre-civid, but they ARE good products and reasonable prices and have good people on staff to make recommendations FREE if necessary.

surfmuz,

This is a question of room acoustics, not soundproofing a room. Two different topics.

Textbook RT60 for a mastering control room, mostly accomplished with natural treatments, a bit of hidden in art absorbers, etc.. 

But first a question (s ) to the OP about your tastes, what is your resident orchestra and where are your preferred seats in the hall ? Have you heard your Spendor in a better room or system ? what does it do that yours does not ? Congrats on the Spendor BTW, most excellent.

millercarbon:

Appreciate your insight. Excuse my lack of knowledge, but if my speakers (Spendor D9.2) are base spiked to carpet, aren't they already effectively isolated?

Thanks

OP: I have read countless comments that the best thing you can do to improve the listening experience is to acoustically treat the room. But where does one gain the expertise to do so? There are so many products/options out there. I have no clue where to begin (or if I even need to do it)

Already told you how to gain the expertise: clap and listen. Use your ears. That simple.

What I left out is you don’t even need to do that. By far the best thing you can do is simply fine tune your speaker placement. By fine tune I mean use a tape measure to get them precisely symmetrical and equidistant. Next take everything apart, clean all the contacts, and when reconnecting this time take care to route all the wires keeping them away from all the other wires, and off the floor, and for that matter off of everything. No more tangles of wires right on top of each other.

A big reason so many audiophiles think the room is important is because they haven’t isolated anything and so are transmitting a huge amount of speaker energy straight into the floor, walls and ceiling. If you energize every surface of your room this way then of course your room is gonna be a huge problem. Duh. Effectively isolate your speakers and other components on Nobsound springs and this will eliminate a lot of that. More and more are catching on.

Between the clap test and the tape measure and the springs you will have spent an afternoon and about $100 and achieved results that with GIK would take $1500 and 3 months. Also you would have learned an incredible lot about sound, vs learning how to stick expensive panels on a wall. 

Room Treaments - Where To Begin...

Beginning is not at placing acoustic panels or analysis of room characteristics. First thing you need to do is to seal all possible acoustic leaks. Imagine that your room is the vessel filled with water, then try to understand where the water could leaked out of the vessel, find that leaking spots and seal it as good as you can…we talking about AC or water pipes walls entering points, cables or electric outlets, windows and doors gaps etc.

Appreciate all the responses thus far. Thanks!

If we spend as much time jerking with the room as we did looking at new audio gear, we would have already developed a sense of intuition about room acoustics. 

I think most of us who don't have a dedicated listening room may never know how good our systems can sound with everything in its right place. But I also know, having been in a few listening rooms, that sound really doesn't care if you have a dedicated listening room. You can tilt your living room in the right direction with very smart choices in decor.

Rugs, absorbtion and diffusion panels are great but the ceilings are also important. The best rooms I've been in had great ceilings.

Got a room with a flat ceiling? Got all the usual stuff done? Focus on the ceiling.

Haven't started thinking about acoustics? Focus your first efforts on the front wall and the side walls, ceiling and floor that extend 20-30% toward you. This is the most critical area. Softening this area will sharpen the focus. Everything else is also important but start here.

That's just my intuition.

Wow! these delays with GIK are huge. There was nothing like this when I bought my GIK panels. It was really quick back then, but that was a few years back. It seems like GIK are now victims to their own success, and unable to scale to accommodate a larger business volume.

@grannyring I'm ok your heels at 3 months. My order was supposed to ship last week. Considering canceling as well. Be ready for delays with GIK. 

Furniture.

HELLO, Dennis Foley anyone! May cost you 20,000 but what the hell. Or you can diy which is the way to go. 

GIK is good, but I finally gave up on an order that was going on three months! Be prepared to wait. Ended up buying from other sources that could fill the order. Hopefully things will get better for them. I ordered diffusion panels.  Better to treat reflection points with diffusion based on my experience.  Absorption can make your music sound lifeless. 

Vicoustics is another option. They give a detailed analysis of your room with pictures you send them. No cost to you. Good luck ! 

I used GIK. Very good people to work with. I have a 12 by 21 room. Cost about 1200.. they are 6 to 8 inches thick. I could buy more bass traps but haven’t put up on my list. I can walk around the room and the music sounds good with only a little bass peak in a corner.There are many things that come to play., sub placement and speaker placement are two items that need to be dealt with.

Recently, I put speakers and subs on springs. This helped as much as the room treatments.  It is much easier when it is a dedicated room.

Don't judge a book by its cover. The cover says, "Acoustics hard. Use headphones."