The problem with absorption panels- it kills the fine details

Sigh. 

Just sigh.

OK, it's clear a little clarification on acoustics is needed here. Not trying to mansplain, but just to provide some context.

1) Speakers provide input into the listening space. What you hear is the direct sound from the speakers plus the reverberant output of the room. This is why equalization, graphic or automated DSP is a mixed bag - it can only change the input to the room, not the output of the room.

2) In every room there is a point where the direct sound level equals the reverberant field level. This is called 'the critical distance'. Listening inside the critical distance is listening in the nearfield. Beyond the critical distance you hear mostly reflected 'far field' sound - mostly the room output. In a 2000 ft3 room, depending furnishings, the critical distance will typically be 3 to 5 feet (!). Extending that distance to hear more of the speaker and less of the room is a function of speaker angular coverage and acoustical treatment. This is why you see directional horns in recording studios and live sound, and why nearfield monitors like KEF LS-50s and venerable LS3/5a designs get lost in larger rooms - they are tuned for nearfield listening.

3) Acoustical panels (2" thick) absorb sound, mostly from 200 Hz and above. Diffusers, well, diffuse the reflected / reverberant field, normalizing the level and reducing 'hot spots. Placing either to reduce first reflections is the first objective of any acoustical treatment plan.

4) Below 200Hz is the province of bass traps. Since the fundamental frequencies of most musical instruments and the human voice are under 200Hz,the importance of bass traps cannot be overstated.

5) The acoustical requirements for a listening room, home theatre, and recording studio are all quite different, as are the requirements for recording a large symphonic work versus a small jazz quartet versus a multi-tracked pop or rock track. Home theaters in particular benefit from being the most damped, as you are replacing the entire reverberant field with the surround sound mix.

Overdamped 2-channel listening rooms, as noted, can sound 'dead', but left untreated they too often suffer from mid and upper mid-range 'glare' and lack of definition as well as boomy, uneven bass because the listening area is well beyond the critical distance, leaving your ears at the mercy of the sum of all room reflections and anomalies.

6) There are lots of online acoustical calculators to help begin the process of tuning a room for your specific requirements and listening taste. These are a starting point, not an end point. Also, there are numerous online advisors on the subject, some are quite skilled and others quite arrogant, most with a product or service to sell. Hey, gotta pay the rent. 

Furniture is far too vague a term to generalize. Suffice to say a sleek italian leather sectional is at best a diffuser while an overstuffed Victorian fabric sofa is quite an effective, if not optimally placed absorber. 

More than an other component, your room and it's acoustics will return more on your investment than any other changes you can make. A modest rig in a well controlled room will be more enjoyable than a mega-buck system in a poor room.

I’m interested in online acoustical calculators. There have been a few listed here but the interfaces seem challenging. And they all have to be done on a desktop or laptop. iPads are taboo in this world these days for acoustical testing even if you connected it to a microphone which is absurd.

Is there something that can be purchased that could be plugged into a microphone and you can see the measurements displayed on a graph of your current room status before you start doing all the room correction work.

dirac won’t do that and it’s very difficult to figure out the original acoustic profile of a room. They’re interface is horrifying and there’s so many noise signal errors when you do the testing it is the most unpleasant experience in the entire world. And now I hear higher end speakers create problems for Dirac testing which leads to noise Signal errors. Wtf? Macintosh has a very expensive box that does a lot of stuff but it doesn’t provide a graph of your current situation Nor a graph when it’s all over. Wtf?

There has to be a simple way to evaluate a room without going nuts. Dirac has a very outdated app on the iPad which hasn’t been updated for several years, it’s horrifying and unusable. So good luck doing room correction with a nad processor

Hire a professional to measure your room and make specific recommendations or, get a semi professional measurement job done with the help of GIK or another of the many vendors who serve this space.

Room correction programs like Dirac or similar help a room to suck less, not sound better. It is also unlikely to be of any use EVER to someone with an analog setup.

It isn't hard to achieve the desired result but it isn't inexpensive to do it correctly.

@emergingsoul 

+1

A little anecdote. My local retailer sells megabuck equipment. Over the years, I have auditioned Wilson, Gryphon, Spectral, Rockport, etc. Many systems approach $100K. I have never once been engaged by any of their systems. The culprit was an acoustically dead room. Recently, a friend got the audiophile bug, and we auditioned a system for him consisting of KEF LS 50 Metas and a Primaluna integrated. The dealer's room was minimally damped, but the sound was some of the most engaging "toe-tapping" sounds I have heard. I would have easily guessed at least a $50K system if I was blindfolded. That dealer's philosophy is to replicate a customer's listening room, which they do an excellent job of.