Your room is quite the looker also.
Even though I'm not a fan of any of the acoustic treatments I've seen, they can be very expensive and there is so much science/physics involved in knowing what you are doing, my confidence level in treating the room would be very low. I like the look of those RPG diffusers (the little wooden blocks). John Darko had his "lounge room" treated and made the comment that one might want to start out with treating the ceiling. I believe that he said that it made the biggest difference overall and it's the least visually intrusive (which I liked).
Back in the day, about 40 years ago, I had egg crates on my bedroom wall. They were the 18 count square flats and using 2 colors (gray and purple) I constructed a giant checkerboard pattern. Hideous it was, with the rooms orange shag carpet. Man, I wish I had a picture of that. My parents were saints for putting up with that mess. Many moons ago as well, I graduated to Sonex squares, but sold those over 30 years ago.
Having said that, I have, in the past (before acquiring my M3s), looked at the GIK Acoustics site. I'm about 75 miles north of Atlanta so they are somewhat local for me. If time allows, could you tell me which product(s) of theirs you have, how they affected the M3's sound, as well as pros and cons in your environment?
Within 30 minutes of firing up the M3s, my buddy and I had moved them twice, going from the initial recommended 1 meter to the current location with the front baffle being 6 feet in to the room. The bass is spectacular and getting more prominent by the day. I feel it may end up being overpowering (in their current location). I haven't played with tilt (longer spikes) or toe-in yet, but the toe-in may balance the sound out a little/lot.
My room is about 17.5' by 23.5' with the speakers being on the short wall.
Also, do you have a link that lists your system components? We love to talk about our gear, but some of us have a LOT of it!
Thanks
The corner traps are GIK, they open up the imaging and give a presence and sound stage. For the others, you see our ACS panels that both absorb and defuse. They are 8" x 48" I use flux plants to look good but also they really make an impact, the room is so much of what we hear. Yes, the M3s can really put out bass and superb bass, Clayton told me once they break in you may have too much bass, so then move them back 6" and see the impact, in my room toe-in is very important, so once your feel your speakers have settled into their final sound, play with toe-in, once I feel I got it correct, to check I'll toe them in 1/4" more or even 1/2" and listen and see what the impact is in my room. If it is better by toeing them in, I go another 1/4" and see if it works better or if I lose what I had, if so I know where I had the toe-n now is correct for my room and speaker. My carpet is thick with an 8lb pas under it. Where I differ with most, is many speakers sounded better sans spikes, with the M3s they have a nice firm footer where you screw the spikes into, so that is how I use them front footers only. OMG, do they come to life. Most folks have wooden floors so the spike may work better. Jim Smith a renowned setup professional feels the same way I do about spikes, they clean things up but strip away a lot of body, detail, and dynamics. My Quad speakers turned into a transistor radio with spikes, but my Dynaudio Confidence 5's sounds good with them. Spikes became a defacto for speaker designers as they were to be expected on speakers so they do it for sales. I also tell folks that if you have a good carpet and pad try them without spikes and see how they sound to you in your room. I go back to the spikes from time to time, in less than a song being played they are off.
I have downsized my gear as I am getting older, sold a lot of really expensive stuff, and thankfully I stored so much of my older gear that I really liked. I grew up on vinyl but after the mid-'90s with the CD technology maturing, I went to CDs sold my vinyl, and never looked back. My dealer keeps trying to sell on streaming but it never sounds as good as my CDs and he keeps trying though..smile. To me it's like streaming a UHD movie and then playing the same movie on my Blu-Ray 4K player, it makes the stream version look so inferior, and that's what I hear on streaming, but they both are convenient. So DAC's and Streamers systems I have heard were over $20,000 so good stuff is being used.
My system nowadays is simple, Marantz SA-10 SACD player/DAC sold my Esoteric K01, preamp and amp Mark Levinson 326S preamp and 532H amp, they were a match for each other, but I stored them and went with Luxman C800F preamp and the matching class A amp along with the Esoteric K01. Before that my Quads ESL 63's with tube gear, and before that Dynaudio Conference 5's with Jeff Rowland gear. I could go on and on gear. I was lucky to work in a business where I really had a chance to meet and learn a lot of the top people in audio while working for Sony.
Today I am very happy with my system. It just makes music sound right and enjoyable, done chasing my tail because once it is really good then you reached your goal then after that I was doing change for change's sake and a slightly different sound. But in hindsight getting a good room brought more benefits than gear swapping.
GIK will give you good advice, if you noticed I put up Canvas prints so as not to look like a recording studio, but I do know if I wanted an even better sound I have large panels by GIK in place of them, but I wanted to room to look good also, so we cannot have it all. My system is in my loft area so behind me is no wall it is open to the family room below, so that makes how my speakers work in my room much different than those whose rooms are enclosed, so the loft offers a superlong throw area for the woofers to really go as low as they can, in fact I took 2 subs out of the system and use them in the family for my TV system.
