Passive vs Active...Again!

There are a lot of sneaky ways to make a room art friendly and also ’acoustically sweet’. These two objectives have a lot of overlap and you can satisfy both masters by careful planning.

My wife will not tolerate acoustic treatments in our living room. So I made a compromise that really worked for both of us. All artwork must not be behind glass...so no picture frames. What we have on the wall are canvas paintings, fabric tapestry, wood carvings. Even the chandelier is a perforated brass affair. The only shiny smooth surfaces are a TV on the long side wall and the full width window on the back wall. A wool throw blanket covers the TV during listening sessions and we selected heavy velvet drapes for the back window. Everything on the wall and floor has a diffusive or absorbtive quality.

We have a hardwood floor so we chose the biggest wool Persion rug we could fit in our room.

You would not know this room places a high priority on acoustics but it actually makes the room more interesting.

Everything from candle holders to vases have an acoustic signature. I simply place the harder, smoother vases in other rooms. The wood and heavy textured pottery stayed.

We have lot’s of live plants next to window.

It’s visually and acoustically sweet.

sandthemall - very creative, some great ideas, thx!

dinov - +1

atmasphere - thanks Ralph, that's what I kinda though.

yogi42 - Paradigm 120 h - yes, I saw these when they first came out and I'd love to hear them, problem is, where?

kingharold - https://www.deqx.com/products/hdp-4/ - stuff like this is really cool but I don't think I could figure out how to use it. I bought a microphone online and downloaded Room Perfect. I got so confused I returned the mic and deleted the software!

OMG! Have you seen this: https://www.deqx.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/DEQX-User-Manual.pdf Completely out of my level! Don't they make anything automatic anymore?

For easy to use room correction,  ARC in the Anthem and Dirac in NAD (other brands too) 

@atmasphere , You can put dipoles closer to the wall but you have to use effective sound deadening behind the speaker. My Sound Labs are three feet off the front wall. The wall behind the speakers is covered with 4" thick acoustic foam. 

@cindyment , Line source (floor to ceiling) dipoles not only limit reflections off the floor and ceiling but also off the side walls. I have been using DSP since 1995. It will not fix certain room issues and yes, the optimal tune is at the listening position in terms of time and phase but then it always is isn't it? DSP provides speaker control not room control. Subwoofer management is IMHO the most significant benefit. It allows you to put the subs where they work best and still sinc them with the main speakers. You can use up to 10th order filters and get away with it. Next is in room EQ. Location and size are determined by phase/time and relative volume. Phase/time are not so much a concern with one way ESLs but the relative frequency response of the two is. The exact same speakers will have different frequency response curves because they are in different locations. Then there are differences in tolerances of the many components. With serial in room measurements you can tweak the frequency response curves so the the two are within 0.5 dB 100 Hz to 12 kHz. (a lot of work) Switching the EQ on and off by remote at the listen position discloses a wife noticeable increase in image specificity. Voices that were once difficult to distinguish are now separable. Same for massed horns and orchestras. The sense of an instrument with space around it is heightened. This is what I call the 3rd dimension not how far back on stage a voice or instrument is. The images are no longer flat as if spattered against a glass pane. Another interesting occurrence with a system tuned this way is balance becomes more critical. I find myself tweaking the balance several tenths of a dB from one recording to another to get the energy centralized. Before balance was a set it and forget it issue.  IMHO DSP will improve any system and it might be the only way to get to the absolute sound.