jsalerno277 - congrats on your discovery that treatments can provide real substantive sound quality benefits. I am a bit surprised at how a single trap made so much of a difference that you listed, especially in an open concept room - I don't doubt your findings and would encourage you to expand your coverage as WAF, budget, and space allows. Absorption of bass energy helps:
- remove modal peaks and fill in nulls for better symmetry of Left/Right speaker loudness.
- reduce bass decay times that are too long relative to the average midrange decay times and as such can improve midrange clarity by reducing what was bass masking before the treatments. Aim for your lowest 1/3rd octave interval of <500ms or ~150% of the avg midrange decay times, whichever is lower. For example, if your EDM music has a tempo of 120 beats per minute which is 1 beat every half second or 500ms, you want the first beat to decay down to the noise floor before the second beat begins otherwise the second beat begins while the 1st is still decaying and heard which adds to the one-note bass effect. But the bass decay time should be relative to its mids (see point below)
- a Bass Decay and "Warmth" is a ratio that considers how well the bass and midrange integrate. It takes the average decay times of two bass octaves and divides it by 2 midrange octaves average values and should be between 1.1 - 1.45. I wrote an article about it here: https://www.thesilo.ca/combining-bass-loudness-decay-times-to-improve-stereo-quality/#google_vignette
- invest in both velocity (insulation filled) and pressure (membrane, diaphragm, Helm Holtz) type bass traps for best results
Keep going!!!