It is possible that the colorations you hear at high levels are actually present at lower levels, but are below the detection threshold.
In a small room, you inevitably have lots of early-onset reflections, and in general early-onset reflections are more likely to be detrimental than later-onset reflections. In my opinion it makes sense to address this situation at the speaker design level, rather than relying solely on room treatments, because room treatments are not frequency-selective enough to target the types of problems loudspeakers tend to have in small rooms.
For instance, if your tweeter has much wider dispersion than your woofer(s) in the crossover region, the reverberant field in your room will have excess energy in the lower treble region, at the lower end of the tweeter's range. This is more likely to color the tone and degrade the clarity if the reflections begin arriving relatively early, as is the case in a small room. Absorptive panels cannot target just that frequency region; they will absorb broadband, and enough absorption to eliminate the coloration may also make the room too "dead". Some absorption will probably be beneficial in your case, but in my opinion it's easy to over do it in a small room.
The fact that you're using the word "amplify" makes me think that you may indeed be getting emphasis in the 3-4 kHz region from the reverberant field, as that is where the ear is most sensitive so extra energy in that region would seem to amplify things.
Imho, ime, ymmv, etc.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer
In a small room, you inevitably have lots of early-onset reflections, and in general early-onset reflections are more likely to be detrimental than later-onset reflections. In my opinion it makes sense to address this situation at the speaker design level, rather than relying solely on room treatments, because room treatments are not frequency-selective enough to target the types of problems loudspeakers tend to have in small rooms.
For instance, if your tweeter has much wider dispersion than your woofer(s) in the crossover region, the reverberant field in your room will have excess energy in the lower treble region, at the lower end of the tweeter's range. This is more likely to color the tone and degrade the clarity if the reflections begin arriving relatively early, as is the case in a small room. Absorptive panels cannot target just that frequency region; they will absorb broadband, and enough absorption to eliminate the coloration may also make the room too "dead". Some absorption will probably be beneficial in your case, but in my opinion it's easy to over do it in a small room.
The fact that you're using the word "amplify" makes me think that you may indeed be getting emphasis in the 3-4 kHz region from the reverberant field, as that is where the ear is most sensitive so extra energy in that region would seem to amplify things.
Imho, ime, ymmv, etc.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer