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Best Speaker Choice for my very "non-audio-friendly" Living Room

New to A-Gon, and looking for advise on purchasing a set of speakers.
My room is about as sound stage unfriendly as you can imagine (Hard to describe) as the center of the room is a huge fireplace with speaker placement options limited to about 25' apart from each other on each side of the fireplace. The room is approx 30' by 14' so my listening distance from each speaker is 15' & 16' from my center chair.
With that said, I have always (maybe wrongly) been inclined to buy big powerful speakers in an attempt to fill the room with good sound.
Up til now I have been running an Anthem 540 Amp, and running my fronts through a Peachtree 500 from the Pre-Outs on the Anthem to a set of Cerwin Vega Twin 15's. I actually liked the sound of this setup, but the twin 15s were just huge and honestly obnoxious on the living room (my wife had a stronger opinion on that than I did lol) 
So, I have moved the big Vega's down to the shop / pool room  and thats where they will live with a modest emotiva amp/pre amp combo that works well. 
I like the option of a Klipsch Cornwall (old school look, but much shorter and more esthetically appealing than the Vega's or maybe a set of Focal 948's which I listened to at the local shop. Both of these options are in my price range, and I "think" would give me the sound / performance I loved with my Old Vega's but look much better in the room. 
Any advice from the experts on this forum would be greatly appreciated. 
 
carzmaguy88
carzmaguy88 OP
25 posts
 
Thanks for the reply!

Imaging is not as critical to us, and it is a very novice / wide question indeed. Haven't looked at the open baffle idea yet, had not considered them. Very different!
Guess I'm just looking for opinions as to what the best overall sound quality I can achieve from a $6000 range set of speakers when proper speaker placement is really not possible, or if I'm just throwing money away when It really wont make much difference due to my room restrictions. 
ghdprentice
7,320 posts
 
Interesting question. So, if imaging isn’t important… what is the purpose of the liven room system? Listening for many? Casual. The fireplace, how wide… how far from the listening area? a couch?


things I am thinking is stuff like high quality monitors on stands closer together. What about and audio[like room elsewhere and doing Omni directional speakers in the living room that will not creat mass bass overloading and can be closer and not as obvious. You could put a couple photos in your system profile so we could get a better idea of the challenge. Honestly it sounds an interesting challenge.





motokokusanagi
189 posts
 
An open baffle is a strong choice as it directly seeks to address the acoustic problems with the directivity of box speakers in a problematic room.

Here’s the late, great Siegfried Linkwitz discussing the same https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrxwudn7C4w

My concern is audition/demo is more important than anything else, so you’d want to be able to listen/return anything you are seriously shortlisting; especially for this price.
artemus_5's avatar
artemus_5
1,992 posts
 
Tekton speakers may be the route to take. They have  a lot of good reviews. Not a fanboy but they have a lot of good reviews. Gotta count for something IMO
boxer12
8,656 posts
 
Wilson made a pair of speakers with stands (Duette) for a number of years that they recently discontinued. They were supposedly made to be less room dependent than the other speakers in their line. I own Wilson speakers & like them a lot but never heard the "duette's", so can't comment on their performance. Others seem to like them though, & they come up used in your price range occasionally.  
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