Speakers least affected by room acoustics

Sorry to have to chime in guys, we have owned line arrays, diapoles and most of the kinds of loudpeakers out there.

30 years plus of professional experience here.

If you have a high ceiling there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO, other than use room treatments. Period.

A good rug can help, which will absorb some of the enegy that would bounce up but that is it.

If you hang a treatment off of the ceiling you will eliminate slap echo but you don't want to do that. 

Electronic room correction, diapoles and line arrays will not eliminate slap echo. Electronic rooom correction can tune out frequency peaks and valleys to ensure a flater frequency response, no room correction system unless it was in real time and could identify direct sound vs reflected sound and be able to filter out the reflected sound.

If you have large parallel surfaces sound will bounce off the floor, travel to the ceiling and bounce down, no loudspeaker in the world can eliminate that.

Atttractive room treatment panels like Contuzzi suggested will help to absorb some reflected sound which would help the sound of the room but not fix it entirely.

A diapole will eliminate side to side reflections as a diapole has a figure 8 radiation pattern. Even a speaker with narrow vertical radiaton patttern which is a diappolito array will eliminate sound bouncing off the floor in an untreated room it can help though.

A line arry provides very even pressurization but still will suffer from floor bounce.

Your best case senario use an attractive floor covering with an acoustical matt, and use speakers which are diappolito designs and get the speakers closer to your ears in a nearfield arrangement.

Larson at least works with controlled dispersion if you have the corners free and do sound excellent, however, the floor bounce issue/reflected ceiling will stlll make the room sound too live.

So if you want to do the maximum:

1: Rug with acoustical matting
2: Diapollito speakers
3: Near field listening
4: Room correction to help flatten any frequency issues which would arrise from any of the above.

Good luck.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Not all digital room correction is the same and some go beyond being merely a sophisticated frequency equalizer.

For example, Impulse response correction:

http://www.sonicstudio.com/amarra/irc.php

I have not used and cannot vouch for any particular processing solution but I believe it is an approach that might be worth a trial.

Good points overall by Audio Doctor I would say. Addressing floor reflections can certainly help as can isolation stands or pads under speakers in many cases where floors have give and are not rigid (at least with cleaning up the bass) .

If smaller monitor speaekrs are used (not tall floorstanders) placement on short isolation stands like Isoacoustics brand with slight tilt up especially if room is not very deep can help to make for a less offensive situation in regards to a more natural sounding soundstage and imaging.


Finally I would add that I find in very lively sounding rooms, less is often more when it comes to speakers and smaller models (floorstander or monitor) often tend to fit in best.   In my problem room, I once tried a refoamed pair of small vintage Boston A30 monitors  (can be had used for used for well under $100) in there and these might have been the best sound of anything I've tried in that particular room,  including other modern monitors and floorstanders costing well into the 4 digit range..    

Yes all good points made. The Lyngdorf 2170 does wonders in my room with high ceilings. It does in fact help!

The advice that most mirrors my experience comes from audiotroy.   If someone come to me asking me to build a speaker for them and they had a lot of boundry room issues.  I would have recommended one of two.  One was nailed above.  An MTM with a rug covering as much of the floor possible in front of the speakers.  Next alternative would be a speaker with a wide front baffle.  
When we build speakers, we use Baffle step compensation to counteract the effects of the sound that shoots around the cabinet.  The wider the cabinet front the less or no compensation is needed.  With a wide front baffle,  it helps keep all drivers firing in the direction the speaker is facing and stops midrange reflections. Still add the rug to the floor to help floor reflections. I then would add to get a sealed box woofer or a front firing port in this case.  Drape as much of the rear wall as possible.  You should be able to pull in some fairly solid results. 

corner loaded speakers like audio note or klipsch can work well with most any room provided it is big enough and you have the freedom to make it work with respect to room layout and furnishings.