Speakers this way, or that, with cathedral ceiling

Thanks for your help on this. It will be a whole new world for me, something I've never experienced. Looking forward to it all.

I'm in the same situation as you. If either works, place the speakers along the wall where the ceiling is lowest, pointing toward the wall where the ceiling is highest. Think of an amphitheater -- sound projects out. placing the speakers along the 'high' wall pointed toward the 'low' wall is like listening from the mouth of a funnel. You'll likely experience more ceiling reflection that way.

Unfortunately my speaker position is the undesirable latter situation. More then one acoustic tech has suggested rotating my setup 180˚ for the above reasons. I did try it briefly, unfortunately it didn't work out from a layout standpoint. However, there did seem to be an audible improvement while they were in this position.

Hodu,

I too have a similar room with possibly a more extreme configuration (my wife's remodeling idea). My listening room is 20x14 which opens to the dinning room/kitchen that is the other half of a huge 20x22 space. The apex of the cathedral ceiling (and I'm guessing) is greater than 20 ft. It's all wood floors, no curtains over the window and furnished very sparsely.

Currently I have my speakers along the long wall, and thus a 20x14 configuration is very much a nearfield experience. I personally hate it. Low-level clarity is a essential in nearfield configuration. If I were to continue with this configuration I would seriously consider horns like Tannoy that I could move very close to the wall. Instead I've decided to go back to the short wall (ceiling sloping down side), which will make my listening space like a big loft with a cathedral ceiling.

I liked this big loft setup much better. I've used Vandersteen 3s, Maggies 3.6s and Merlin VSM placed about 3-4ft from the wall and my listening location is about 15ft from the speakers; no walls behind me for another 21ft. I have a 75 watt OTL amp that works fine in this space. I'm probably not getting great bass, but the sound seems so much more open and spacious. It's far less fatiguing IMO.

Hodu, I am currently using a room that is very small (10X11) and with a
vault ceiling going up to 15ft. The speakers sound best firing towards the
high point of the room. I agree with the other posters who say that otherwise
you would be creating a funnel effect.