[Derek]

jmprader, Thanks. Yes, I have a pair of IB's directly above my mains. Seperate 250w PE amps for them too. Same signal though. Sorry but I don't know what a vignette is. Wouldn't know one if I dropped it on my foot.

Rodn, I have a total of 8 RealTraps in the room. One in each vertical corner and two on each side of the room at the wall, ceiling transition. They didn't make the room live or dead, but they tightened up the bass and gave distinction to musical instruments. It took a lot of muddiness out. They do not impact the first octive, but there's not much music down there. Basiclly everything from above 40 hz up is pretty clean. Bass traps are about coverage, so I've considered adding some to the room, but I'm not sure were I'd put them that wouldn't look weird. If you only put a couple in your room, it won't make a difference
On a similar note, a friend had a vmps larger sub and hated it. Couldn't get it integrate well, it was boomy and easy to locate. We tried all kinds of settings, but it just never sounded right. I kept telling him it was his room (Horribly live) but he didn't believe me and wanted to condenm equipment. Finally I talked him into buying a Velodyne SMS-1 PEQ instead of a new sub. This is a very cool EQ with a graphic interface that shows your frequency response real time. He still believed bass traps were a waste of money. The EQ did a great job taming peaks and integrating the sub with the mains. He was able to see why his sytem sounded so boomy. It worked so good, I bought one hoping I could get the kind of improvment he did. It did not cure the problem of slap echo in his room from a bay window, hardwood floors, etc. Six months later I talked him into buying six GIK bass traps. These are simple fiberglass in frames, so they attenuated upper frequencies as well and they're cheap too. Echo was gone, upper bass was cleaned up and he ended up removing the SMS-1 from his system ( I think he should keep it and tweek it). He prefers the sound of his room now.
I ended returning mine a few days after I bought it. It did improve the sound, but not $600 worth. Don't get me wrong, I do believe in EQ's but for me they are the last compnent in the system to fine tune it. I have a Sherwood Newcastle Pre-Amp with built in auto EQ, and if they ever get the software de-bugged, it's gonna be icing on the cake. I have one big peak at 25hz and one big dip at 35hz. After ~40 Hz it smoothes right out.
Oh yeah, IB's can sound boomy depending on the room acoustics. What they do is play "effortlessly" and "fast". Yes, 50 Hz is still 50Hz, but the cone can start and stop with less resistance when there is no box. There's less distortion when the cone hardly moves because there is so much surface area moving.