room tuning 12ftx12ft room

Let's face it - if you are into full range music (and who isn't?), small rooms are tough. And frankly, square rooms just suck unless they are very large. Based testing and experimentation in my own lilliputian space, I will take (for example) a 12x9.5 room with good dimensions over a 12x12 room any day. I was never able treat a square room well enough so that I enjoyed listening in it. But that's just me.

My second point regarding wall proximal speaker placement - to each his (or her) own. In a 12x12 room, how far apart do you intend to seperate the speakers? Let's assume a modest 7'. So unless you are going to listen in the nearfield position (always an option) you are going to be approx. 1' off the back wall; probably a little more. If your room is multi-use and you are mostly watching TV that's OK. For critical listening, maybe not.

Try a variety of suggestions and see what works best for you.

Obviously you guys are not familiar with Vandersteen speakers, their design and the amount of bass they are capable of. All of the room treatment in the world and moving speakers/listening position will not make up for the fact that his speakers are not matched for his room.

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The only successful technique that I've found in small square rooms is a 45 degree set-up.

This tricks the room into performing as if it has different dimensions.

All else, no matter how much you spend on room treatment, or move things around, cannot fix the problems with bass peaks and dips due to the room dimensions.

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Rrog is most likely right about the speakers. Seems he's pretty familiar with them. On the other hand, Hornguys advice should be tried as a last ditch effort. Here is some information on why that set-up may work:

http://www.decware.com/paper14.htm

Read the entire article. I've used it before in a very small room with speakers that could be considered too big for the room. It worked quite well. At some of the audio show where rooms are somewhat small people like Roger Sanders and Kara Chaffe use this type of set up. Worth a try IMO.

G19276, your room dimensions are similar to mine. You will not get a room this size to allow a speaker to plumb the depths of 30hz or below reproduction. However, you can enjoy great imaging and intimacy of reproduction with a few tips that helped me greatly. Firstly, I do agree with the posters who say you should try and get the speakers about 1/3rd into the room. The other trick is to apply bass trapping on the wall behind the speakers and as much diffusion as possible on the wall behind your seating position. The Vandy 3's are probably not a good speaker for a room this size, although I suspect you can get them to basically work, but with little bottom end extension. A better suggestion is a small monitor like the SF's I use or maybe Merlin TTM or ?
I also get great results with having the speakers with zero toe-in. Toe-in can be difficult to get right in this size of room, so if zero will work, then that should be tried first.
Is your room a dedicated listening room?