I can prove your room is bad


So you want to upgrade?  You want to know what the next big thing is you can do for a better sounding experience?

Try this.  Pull up a chair 2' in front of your speakers.  If you can't move the speakers, put it up to just 1, and listen for yourself.

The difference between what you hear sitting in front of the speaker like this, and what you hear at your normal location is all in the speaker dispersion and room acoustics. If you feel mesmerized, entranced, and wowed by your speaker at 2' but not 8' you really should consider improving the room, and if you can't, consider getting speakers with alternative room coupling, like ESL's, line arrays, bi-polars, etc.

That is all,


Erik
erik_squires
I just put my Deutsche Grammophon Placido Domingo Carmen on the turntable. Sitting at 2 feet, soundstage is bigger and wider (as it should be).  It's like I've just gotten a seat closer to the stage.  Amazingly, I still get convincing center fill and even more 3D.  Intriguing.  I'll continue to experiment.
Way to make audiophiles even more neurotic than they already are!


Sir, you have your hobbies and I have mine.  ;-)

I'm in the process of purchasing a subwoofer array (DEBRA). It's supposed to greatly diminish the room problems/ need for lots of treatment. We'll see. 
It's supposed to greatly diminish the room problems/ need for lots of treatment. We'll see.



Only for the bass. All the discussions of multiple subs eliminating a room are about room modes in the bass region.  The rest of the speaker range is still subject to the effects I noted in the original post.