The problem with absorption panels- it kills the fine details

Room treatment is not something that can be guessed at nor something easily done by ear. It is difficult to tame reflections, get a good room response, and maintain on axis speaker response if you are using DSP. That does not mean DSP is bad. It is a tool and must be used responsibly.  I expect you absorbed too much mids making other frequencies more pronounced which further masks the mids. That wrecks your detail.

Sounds like you overdid it with the panels.  I’d start just treating first-reflection points and see how that works and maybe some diffusion behind the speakers.  A careful mix of absorption and diffusion seems to be key. 

Any room treatment first requires identifying the problem.  If absorption panels remove detail then you have applied the wrong solution, probably in the wrong places. Rooms can be over damped or over diffused, actually sometimes they can be both. My particular room has a massive bass problem at 63Hz, damping helped greatly, but dampened too much, however the intermediate solution was more bass, in the form of 2 subwoofers. This stopped critically high localised bass nodes whilst absorption calmed down the rest, diffusion behind, at the sides and rear were also beneficial. Interestingly the most effective resolution, in the end, was to buy a lower powered tube amplifier, great bass without excess, so 150 watts down to 25 watts provides much better bass and crisp high end, the mid range is of course a bonus.

I'm among the "room sound" fans...there are a few of us (more than a few actually) out there who believe that most rooms generally sound fine with their furnishings providing all the damping you need. Plenty of pro reviewers are in that camp, as rooms, unless you live in a bare shipping container or a dumpster, often have a live-ish reality tone, or at least a tone of their own. Fear not. I use 2 subs to cancel or at least manage low bass standing waves, but my rugs and other crap somehow manage to make my listening room (large-ish living room) sound great.

It's true, a room can be over-damped.  None of us would like to listen in an anechoic chamber.

But think on this.  A performance properly recorded for stereo presentation will contain all the artifacts of that performance in that room.  We should hear it as if we were in that room.  But if we listen to it in our rooms we will hear reflection artifacts of our room on top of those of the performance venue.  It seems to me that will confuse and complicate the performance we are trying to listen to, even distort it.

If we want truth in playback, may I make a plea for a bit more damping, rather than a bit less.