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
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.
I would say it's 70% room / 30% set up. The room is a wide open space with little boundary reinforcement, it may be better suited to an omnidirectional radiator. The back wall (being a hard flat surface) won't help any with the soundstage. Actually, every surface being hard and flat isn't helping. Lastly, I think your seating position may be too close to the back wall.

I really wanted to post to say that if you laid out this kind of money at one dealer, they had better get over to your place and help you find a position you are happy with. It's one thing for a dealer to sell you a $1000 pair of speakers and say "have fun"; but when you buy a precision instrument like this system, the dealer has a responsibility to make sure it is performing to your expectations.
"It's one thing for a dealer to sell you a $1000 pair of speakers and say "have fun"; but when you buy a precision instrument like this system, the dealer has a responsibility to make sure it is performing to your expectations."

I agree with that!