Room treatment with acoustic panels

@cshenon My room model they provided looks exactly like the room we have, right down to the small stand between the wing chairs. Maybe it's who you dealt with? I'm working with Chris Boecker and couldn't be happier so far. Maybe you should voice your concerns to him. 

I should add that when I switched from my previous Accuphase DC-37 DAC to the flagship DC-1000 DAC, my system became more resolving and holographic.  Music is wider, deeper and taller. It's like an expanding bubble than just a flat, wide stereo image. The music reaches out, wraps around you, and pushes the physical boundaries of the room outward. This is what I'm hearing with this Accuphase DC-1000 so I'm wondering how room treatments will further improve on this.  My room is far from perfect but I'm hearing things that I didn't with my previous DAC.

@toddsyr - Thanks for that info.  My email response was from Melissa Harris-Chambers.  A detailed room model resembling my actual room is what I was hoping I'd get, but then I thought maybe I was asking for too much from this "free" consultation.  I did send a follow-up email to her asking if there was a good tutorial on YouTube to understand how to better use the GIK room model tool on their website (thinking I'd do a better model of my room myself), but she never responded to that email  either (or, at least, she hasn't responded to it yet and it's been almost a week).  For now I'm working with Grok Expert to come up with a recommended acoustic treatment plan.  Thanks again.

@fire_water Every improvement adds to the final result. When you think it can't get any better, it does. 

@cshenon You're welcome. They are pretty busy. The lead time for my panels was a little over a month to get them made. Your room model should be as accurate as the information you gave them though.  I used their suggested placement plus the mirror trick to start placing panels. 

@toddsyr   Congrats on making the jump into the acoustics pool, so to speak.  I'm sure your GIK additions have provided more musical details and engagement with your music.

I was where you are many years ago and hope you might be open minded to a few suggestions to take things further.

> acquire and learn OmniMic or REW measurement software so that you can tweak panel placement, angle, quantity etc.  GIK has done their best to guesstimate what you need but accurate measurements of early reflections, decay times, and frequency response will tell you what's going on in your room.

> in terms of using measurements to tweak things, I'd suggest starting with early reflections of 0 - 10ms using an Entergy Time Curve (ETC).  You'll want the early reflections to be down -15 to -18dB from the direct sound ideally.  Here L vs R symmetry is important if you can't reduce them down to -15 / -18dB because a stronger/louder reflection will pull the image to that side messing with your image stability.

> measure a T30 decay time in 1/3rd octave intervals to see what's happening, one channel at a time.  Your curve should be flat across mids/highs but be longer (about 150% longer) than your average mids, and ideally fall within a 200 - 450ms overall range.  Add panels to reduce decay times if too long but be careful not to over absorb >2kHz as it'll make the room dead sounding and less engaging.  Use diffusion and reflections for mids/highs and absorption for bass.

> use gentle EQ to correct L vs R frequency responses loudness differences as the last step, typically restricted to the bass region only.

I provide remote analytics services and am in the Toronto area if you're interested.