Is my room doomed? Pic

Your room is an echo chamber period. You need at least a large area rug and probably more. There are way too many hard surfaces and not enough compensating absorptive ones. All of those hard surfaces accentuate higher frequencies making the sound thinner and brighter than it should be. Also imaging is bad because of all the reflections blurring things. Depth is lost for the same reason.

Do the following:

1. Get a LARGE area rug
2. put sound treatment absorption/diffusion on the wall between the speakers where the TV is. Your best bet would be a cover over the TV that is easily removable.
3. Experiment with some small treatment that would at least diffuse (possibly absorb) reflections from the window right near your head.

It looks like a nice big room in the photo. I find it hard to believe you don't hear a huge difference when you close the drapes behind the sofa. If the drapes are made of light weight material you may want to find something heavier. Drapes can make good room treatment too and you can open and close them at will. The wall of windows is an obvious problem. The louder the volume the worse it gets.

I found a photo from CES 2008 showing Rockport speakers with woofers firing to the inside. I know it can be harder to get side firing woofers to work with your room.
http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/010908rock/

Perceptually, a sense of "envelopment" is heavily dependent on reflections coming from the sides. Since there are no sidewalls to speak of, these reflections would have to be synthesized and reproduced through small speakers (which need not begin to approach the Rockports in capability). In other words, this might be a case where it makes sense to consider a multichannel system. Shoot me an e-mail if you'd like some guidelines (don't worry I have no intention of selling you anything, but would rather not post my ideas on the subject here).

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

I think your ears are way too close to the back wall/windows.
Move the sofa into the room a bit. Get your head at least a meter away or more from the windows. Put up wooden blinds and keep curtains closed.
Try a carpet.
Work on some acoustic treatment for the ceiling reflections.
Try moving the bass speakers inside.
Get your speakers and ears equal distance apart.

You have a lot of great suggestions to try. Cmalak's suggestion to email some pictures to Andy and talk to him by phone is a great idea. Seems like you need to definitively settle the issue of the side-firing woofers in that room before you start chasing your tail in an endless pursuit.

Here is the disturbing thing about tweaking. I have found that in a highly resolving system, the seemingly most inconsequential change can make or break the system. I have experienced this repeatedly. Even if you are 95% there, it is ALWAYS about that last 5%. Right now, I am almost afraid to make a change.