Speakers or room


I have a very lively room. Tile floors, large window and open area. If you clap there is a loud echo. Furniture is limited. I set up Kef LS50w and the sound is recessed not forward. The room is 26 x13 and even up close it doesn't sound good. Is it the room? What should I do ? Wife acceptance factor comes into play. 

128x128brianportugal
Lots of misinformation here.  
I would guess that I have more experience with LS50W’s than anyone who has commented on this thread.

Treat your room!  Get the wife excited to pick out your treatments from GIK.  Get the art panels or the new panels that have the wood faces.  Look online at what people have done.  Get creative with colors and shapes and the way you piece them / join them together on your walls.  Get a nice, big, fluffy rug made out of natural fibers, not poly.

Treating your room will make your room a more enjoyable place to be even when not listening to music.  It is easier to understand speech and conversations in a treated room.  Don’t move your set-up.  Make it more enjoyable for everyone in the bigger, living room.

Pull the LS50W’s out from the back wall and out from any sidewalls.  Adjust the settings under DSP.  
LS50W’s are phenomenal speakers when positioned properly, adjusted correctly with the dsp, and the room is treated a little bit.

They also take 200 hours of playtime before the harsh, bright edgy sound relaxes and they come into their own.  Let them play quietly overnight or during the day while no one is home.

Paired with a sub or two, they are exceptional and would knock the socks off any of your friends.  The waf is high on the LS50.  She might file for divorce if you brought some big clunky wooden boxes into the room that looked like they were styled in the 70’s and 80’s (insert Klipsch).

And if it mattered at all, the LS50W has a class A/B amp on the tweeter.  The crossover is handled in the digital domain as well, which can be beneficial.  It’s a point source design with exceptional phase timing and coherency.  The imaging and dispersion is exceptional.

LS50W’s rock.  Don’t give up on them until you have played them for 200 hours, placed them properly, set them up properly with the dsp and treated your room.  Remember, room treatments will benefit any future speaker should you decide to sell the LS50W’s.
I do t know how people call the LS50 bright
I have had mine from the beginning and 
mine never sounded bright
I don’t even have a hi end system 
I use my apex peak volcano hybrid headphone amp and pre amp with a 150 watt NAD amp and a balanced Havana tune DAC 
from day one never sounded bright
if any of them do is their synergy with your other equipment!
they are in my bedroom rig and I will never get rid of them! Fantastic speakers for the money. Also why would the reviews change , that makes no sense. If they change is because people just want new stuff. I am not saying I don’t like new stuff but it is silly and makes no sense.

I would start with treating the upper and lower corners of the room. Eliminating Echo slap will provide significant reduction of artifacts.

I was in a reverberant space years ago with high ceilings and many corners. Even using the very small and thin Roomtune corner traps fixed a tremendous amount of the problem

As suggested already, curtains over the window is a no brainer since it will be aesthetic as well.
A nice Persian rug looks great and may help.

With those basics done, you can listen then decide what other areas to treat.

As mentioned, you should get the speakers away from the rear walls.

If you end up with decent results, then consider upgrading to a more appropriate speaker. No use doing so unless and until you improve the room.




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Maybe get rid of current wife. Order one dozen big fat ones on-line. Place one in each corner, 2 per side at first reflection points and the rest on the floor between you and the speakers.

Face them inwards for better dispersion or outwards for more bottom end.

Seriously, you will have no happiness in that room without treating the acoustics, no matter the speaker chosen.

@b_limo posted some useful stuff and is correct about the misinformation being given out.  Plastic pot plants will not help in any meaningful way. I have posted a few times with advice gained from study and experience which I won't repeat here because there is a lot to be said.

Get an inexpensive mic. and download a free app from Holm Impulse or REW and measure your room instead of guessing. Educating yourself in matters acoustic will reward with treatments that actually help unlike wall to wall carpet or hanging drapes everywhere. These just soak up a narrow band of high frequencies, reducing them disproportionately while the rest of the spectrum are unaffected and remain bouncing around the room with overly long decay smearing and confusing.

DIY is fun and easy and allows you to choose fabric to suit the decor and you are also able to build true broad-band  absorbers instead of the lesser ones sold commercially which need to be smaller for shipping.

What works extremely well is an overhead 'cloud'  This can be a large frame at least 150mm (6") deep filled with OC 703 and suspended at least 100mm below the ceiling. I helped a friend with such a unit which was finished with concealed strip lights and the whole thing looked classy. The addition was transformative.

Good luck.