Ian Millar wrote:I don’t think so. I have plenty more.
Perhaps you are just trying to be proud.
No, Ian, I was simply responding with a graphic to Mcbrion's post to indicate the updated setup in a problematic room. Much simpler and more efficient than describing the layout in words. Much as are your frequency graphs.
I have been through the process and can tell you that you are wasting your time and money with commercial bass traps.
I'm glad you're happy with your EQ'd setup. But we differ in our assessment of trapping. For one thing, you refer to "bass traps," and while that's a major function of the ones I use, they also provide a form of "diffusion" above 400Hz that, given their semi-cylindrical limp-mass design, is probably better described as "controlled reflection" or, alternately, dispersion. That capability, and their orientation flexibility in deployment, has proved useful in dealing with specific-location situations where an absorption-only approach would have effected too much deadening manifested as "life sucked out" of the music. So, in my setup, at least, they perform two functions.
For another, you've claimed that traps or other commercial passive acoustic control devices are no more effective than books as acoustic treatment. That's demonstrably wrong in my experience (and in that of a couple of experienced audio dealers who heard the comparison when I had my dedicated room). One of the problems with that assertion is that there is no generic "book." Your have cloth- or buckram-covered hardbounds, some of which are dust-jacketed, and paperbacks. There's also may be spine curvature, particularly in hardbounds to consider. The variations in cover composition and configuration (and consequent reflectivity and/or absorption) do not--say short of filling your bookshelves with nothing but Britannicas--provide a uniform standard with which to control whatever acoustic artifact you're attempting to deal with. Their effective "operating frequency range" is also restricted. Given those limitations, expect to have to deal with comb filtering. While books are better than a bare wall in this situation, I certainly haven't found a filled bookcase at first or second reflection points anywhere near as effective as a "trap" designed for that purpose and whose operating parameters are known. In both my dedicated-room and current-room setups, the most effective function books with their densely-packed paper pages perform is to "stiffen" the wall behind the filled bookcase and in the process reduce the bass-suckout flexure of that wall. So books can certainly be used to advantage, but not as you suggest.
I recognized the room-opening asymmetry issue years before you brought it to my attention. You can disagree all you want and graph your room to death, and that's fine with me, but the trapping (and the noted "controlled reflection" alignments) indicated at the right front and just forward of it (and in conjunction with the front-center trap) solved the left-right lateral, front-to-back, and frequency balance issue presented by the non-reflective, non-cornered room opening. In large part that's because they control the effects of the myriad reflective surfaces (glass, equipment faceplates, a 40" flat screen, fireplace tile) that are necessarily shoehorned or otherwise architecturally "hardwired" into that space and with which the physical, and not simply the frequency, components of sound transmission have to cope.
Call it random, call it unscientific, and treat me like I'm a wet-behind-the-ears kindergartener if that makes your day, but in the end I've made the room work for those who've listened to music in it. If you've done the same in yours, great.