Is my room doomed? Pic


http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4049/4525445010_d045b8812d_b.jpg

For a discription of room dimensions and equipment you can click my system's page.

While the system is pretty new, I'm having a hard time getting it to sound anywhere as good as the dealer/distributor using very similar equipment (outside the preamp). Is it my room?

The center image is good but the soundstage height/depth is not what I know these speakers are capable of. The depth of the layers in the soundstage is also shallow. I have no sidewalls, and the speakers are firing into floor to ceiling windows (but I do draw the curtains).

Any suggestions? Pull the speakers out more? Toe in more?
enzo618
I think you can easily jump from a 5 to a 10 with room treatments or DRC. Break in will get you nothing in my opinion as for the most part it is a bogus term. The only thing breaking in is your ears to the sound.

Sounds like your dealer is awful too btw.

If I am you I am going to look at digital room correction and see what that does. Even if you just try it as an experament. Room correction can have a huge impact on the sound- especially when trying to clean up muddy midrange and bass. It will also do level balancing between channels and since you have no side walls should dramatically improve imaging. The rear wall must have a huge impact on sound so I would make sure the curtains you are using are heavy enough to properly damp that reflection. This is where your "layers" are most likely getting lost.

You could also do acoustic treatments but your room is so nice and minimalist I would want to see what DRC did first before bringing ugly treatments in.

You have way to much invested to have anything but spectacular sound.
Looks like side firing woofers. Are they facing each other or away from each other? Might be better facing each other with no side walls.
That looks like a room that you want to leverage and not fight.

If all else fails with what you have, you might want to consider a pair of omni design speakers like mbl, OHM , dueval, Morrison, German Physiks, or perhaps even Mirage.

A good omni design will best fill a room like that with sound in a natural manner. More directional designs will have sound waves bouncing all over creation in that room in a more destructive than constructive manner IMHO, no matter what else you do to try and tame it.

You may also need to place something more solid underneath the speakers in order to prevent them from interacting too strongly with the wood floors and delivering bass that is too fat and undefined.
Maybe double-check that the speakers aren't out of phase? I know it's obvious, but you never know...
mbl has some smaller monitors that are largely omni and sit on stands that I could envision being a nice fit to a room like that. Mirage may also for much lower cost.

Monitors on stands would help keep the floors out of the equation. The more wide dispersion or omni the monitors, are the better.

Floor standing OHMs would be a possibility as well. A smaller pair might work well in that room. These are bottom ported though so you would have to be careful about not going overboard with the bass as they interact with what appears to be lively wood floors.