Traps vs Equalizer

Because some folks feel you can hear the distortions that an additional electronic devise and extra cabling will introduce to your system, where as traps and other acoustic room treatments are passive and only change the sound level of certain frequencies. Whether you can actually hear these distortions depends on the acuteness of your hearing, you dedication to listening for these distortions and the ability of your speakers and associated equipment to produce or reveal these distortions. Except for really difficult large (severe)mid/low bass nodes caused by room dimensions a quality narrow band parametric equalizer is much more effective.

Personally, for fine tuning I just try to ID the source of the problem and make small changes in speaker/listening position configuration or adding or subtracting furnishings and or acoustic treatments to reduce the problem to absolute minimum. If you keep the room treatment materials domestic, the room might even have a slight bit of WAF when you are through.

Rives audio, who are experts at this business, say that room treatments are effective for high frequency problems (350 Hz and up), but low frequency problems need active equalization, and they sell a highly regarded equalizer to do the job. Not cheap.

An approach that I took, and recommend, is to buy a Behringer DEQ2496 for about $370 including mic. It provides a 61 band spectrum analyser, as well as graphic and parametric equalization capability. Use the analyser to understand what your problem is. Use the equalizer to fix it. If (and IMHO this is a big "if") you think the equalizer degrades sonic quality, then by all means go out and spend the big bucks for a high end unit like Rives. You can still use the DEQ2496 as a spectrum analyser to set up the other equalizer.

In my room, based on my needs, Rives recommended MondoTraps RealTraps...

I wouldn't accuse them of the "if you're a hammer, the world looks like a nail" syndrome.

Equalizer cannot change the reverberation time of a room. If you have a really bad room, no equalizer can fix that.