I've recently been playing around with a curved diffusor I bought from Acoustic Geometry:
https://www.acousticgeometry.com/products/curve-diffusor/
My room is well treated, and I can make it a bit more live or dead via moving some curtains. My Left speaker has to be pretty close to the fireplace, placing it near a small area of ceramic tiles above the fire place. Not a nice first reflection point so things get a bit hashy. Hence I use a thick velvet cover for the fire place and that reduces any reflection hash beautifully.
But it can also sometimes take a bit of life out of the sound.
I bought the small, manageable diffusor to place at the first reflection point of the L speaker instead of there being the bare tiles.
Even though it was only used on one side, it livened up the whole sound of the system - making voices and instruments sound more direct and "in the room." That was cool. But I also lost a bit of focus, and a bit of the beautiful, nuanced timbre of voices and instruments.
Then I started playing around, put the velvet back up over the fire place, and moved the diffusor around. It turns out that I much prefer it when not in the first reflection point, and it still changes the sound at different points along the wall. In fact, I now tend to put it on the fireplace wall beside the speaker, but pushed just behind the L speaker. This both preserves most of the nuance I get with the fireplace covered, but it seems to add a bit more density and focus and palpability to the sound, especially central images.
It also works well forward of the first reflection point, with a similar but slightly different effect. Or even if I place it in the Right wall corner near me - there seems to be a large variety of places to put the thing allowing me to experiment and tune the sound as I wish. Pretty neat for just one little diffusor!
https://www.acousticgeometry.com/products/curve-diffusor/
My room is well treated, and I can make it a bit more live or dead via moving some curtains. My Left speaker has to be pretty close to the fireplace, placing it near a small area of ceramic tiles above the fire place. Not a nice first reflection point so things get a bit hashy. Hence I use a thick velvet cover for the fire place and that reduces any reflection hash beautifully.
But it can also sometimes take a bit of life out of the sound.
I bought the small, manageable diffusor to place at the first reflection point of the L speaker instead of there being the bare tiles.
Even though it was only used on one side, it livened up the whole sound of the system - making voices and instruments sound more direct and "in the room." That was cool. But I also lost a bit of focus, and a bit of the beautiful, nuanced timbre of voices and instruments.
Then I started playing around, put the velvet back up over the fire place, and moved the diffusor around. It turns out that I much prefer it when not in the first reflection point, and it still changes the sound at different points along the wall. In fact, I now tend to put it on the fireplace wall beside the speaker, but pushed just behind the L speaker. This both preserves most of the nuance I get with the fireplace covered, but it seems to add a bit more density and focus and palpability to the sound, especially central images.
It also works well forward of the first reflection point, with a similar but slightly different effect. Or even if I place it in the Right wall corner near me - there seems to be a large variety of places to put the thing allowing me to experiment and tune the sound as I wish. Pretty neat for just one little diffusor!