ASC vs GIK?

I am afraid I actually have very strong opinions based on listening experience at a show. 

I attended a show near Oakland, CA ages ago, sponsored by ASC acoustics.  Most rooms were heavily treated with ASC tube traps, regardless of size.  A few were not.  Fritz, interestingly, was not using them, but he came with a handful of flat panels. 

My experience after listening to at least a dozen rooms with ASC tube traps is that the rooms all developed one-note bass.  The bass sounded exactly the same no matter the music.  Very much a disco/thumping kind of response.  I believe that this has to do with exactly where they dampen.  It’s kind of a broad mid-bass suckout, leaving the thump, but removing anything else.  For me this was not good and also, very expensive. 

I’d usually strongly suggest you invest in ATS or Gik instead, and depending on what exactly you need.  If you have really low room modes that need control Gik has some of the best performing soffit traps and corner traps out there. 

For general room taming absorber panels I’d go with either.  Gik has in the last few years also added a line of combination diffuser + absorber panels. 

Five years ago, I researched traps and chose Real Traps by Ethan Winer. 

I've had several of the GIK traps. Terrible.

The GIK stuff is extremely poor quality with poor workmanship included. Do you really want to hang veneer covered MDF on your walls? 

The corner traps seem to work, but the rest is junk.

The Real Traps website has all kinds of data on their products and some very useful info.

Even if you don't want to buy from Real Traps, their website is a good source for how to effectively treat your room.

Maybe their suggestion was excessive but maybe it would have worked.

@traudio panel speakers like your Magnepans have unusual dispersion characteristics compared to many box design speakers so the way your speakers interact with your room may be different than the standard models that they use to design room models in Roomle like GiK does.  For instance, my friend's Magnepans are very sweet spot dependent.  Move around the room and they sound terrible.  This means that the frequencies that are hitting the walls/ceiling are most likely very colored with massive frequency nulls, so the paneling isn't absorbing the frequencies broadly along the same as it would with some speakers.

I'd even go as far to say that with Magnepans you  may not need as much absorption, primarily because of this effect where the sound energy is highly directed toward the sweet spot.  If your speakers aren't like this then disregard.  I'm just speaking from experience with one set of Magnepans.

This also makes me wonder if a cloud panel is required or even recommended for certain speakers.  Such as the Perlisten R7T or S7T where the vertical response is severely limited due to the dispersion characteristics of the drivers.  Don't mean to derail the thread but this seems to be part of the heart of the issue.  Being that off axis responses on some designs greatly differ from their on axis response.  And how that should inform the absorption and other paneling in a room.  I know GiK takes into account your speakers when they do the analysis, but I would be surprised if they take horizontal or vertical dispersion into account when designing a room, unless maybe if the client specifically mentions it and the measurements are readily available.