Sound diffusion panels--do they reduce brightness?

What Samhar said.

Davehrab's advice is perfect...I treated my room after visiting this site and made the acoustic panels to Winer's specs...really works well...BTW I have on panel ceiling mounted just in front and above the speakers. You also might want to consider tube amplification. Happy Holidays! You have a beautiful looking house.

Beautiful looking room! Are you still using the same APC power conditioner for all your gear? I might suggest running your amp direct to the wall first, then if the brightness persists, try doing without the APC or replacing it.

Blueskiespbd:

Have you tried playing test tones to see which frequencies are the most offending? Sound quality and timbre are usually affected at about 2kHz and higher.

Furnishings:
Try moving the ottoman that sits between your chairs and the speakers out of the room or off to one side. It looks like it could be leather which may be a hard enough surface to reflect high frequencies to your ears thereby adding to the bright sound.

Pictures on walls are typically hung such that they reflect sounds downward because the top of the picture is farther from the wall than the bottom of the picture. Try placing a tennis ball or block of wood at the bottom of the pictures to angle the picture upwards to reflect sound away from your ears.

Equipment:
Speakers have too much treble, or too little bass – a hot tweeter and/or too little bass will create an exaggerated HF thereby throwing the timbre balance off. Try listening to your system using different speakers to see if the speaker’s sonic balance, cross-over or speaker resonances are at fault.

Reflections:
Direction of reflections – front and rear wall reflections are less advantageous than lateral side wall reflections, so absorption on the front wall improves image localization and reduces colouration whereas diffusion on the back wall helps create listener envelopment. You might consider closing the drapes across the front wall window and adding thick absorption (6” thick minimum) and add diffusion above the back wall absorption panels. Also interesting to note is that ceiling reflections affect timbre while side wall reflections affect spaciousness; looks like your ceiling is bare and therefore could stand some 1st reflection point treatment.

Reverberation:
Longer low frequency reverberations help add ‘warmth’ to a room or hall. I guess in theory you could remove your bass traps to lengthen the bass RT60, or better yet keep the bass traps and add higher frequency absorption (e.g. at ceiling 1st reflection points and/or scattered along the side walls) to shorten the RT60 of the higher frequencies.

Let us know how you make out . . .

kevin