I've been using the PZCs (both wall mount and floor standing) just like those in the picture above for the last few years. The bare room has lots of reverb and echo, and sounds terrible untreated. It would give anyone a headache listening there for any length of time. The devices control the sound energy well enough to make the room a place where I can listen for hours (ok, sometimes I fall asleep with a cd on repeat
). The floorstanding PZCs also help me create the kind of center imaging I like, and adjust it if I want.
Other tweaks Michael Green has suggested over the years have produced significant improvements. For example, removing the cover of my 75-lb 220wpc solid state amp and cracking the internal and external screws 90 degrees, which simply relieves some of the mechanical tension in the amp, opened up my amp and allowed for a more natural sound. I also removed the transformer from the amp (the wires were plenty long), and the bass improved in quality.
All I can say is try one or two tweaks (one at a time though), give your system a week or better two to settle in (it actually may sound worse to your ears initially as your system's equilibrium has been disturbed), and then hear if you like the difference. Not sure what all the fussing here is about. If you try it and it works for you, it works; if it doesn't, it doesn't.
