Listening Room or Components or my ears?

In my experience I have never been in an untreated room that did not emphasize the upper mid’s and hi’s. You also have a room gain imbalance with the right speaker being 15’ from the side wall, which will help de-emphasize the lower frequencies on that side. Also our ears are less sensitive to lower frequencies at lower volume levels. In my opinion you have three things working against you, but I think room treatments is by far the best place to start.

Hello All

I separated the speakers by about a foot and positioned them without the toe-in. It does sound a lot better. A lot! Music is bigger, deeper, involving. Thanks for the advice. Wish I'd done this years ago. Next step - room treatments.

Wood paneling, framed posters, cement floors.....a lots of reflective surfaces. Focal's are tipped up in the treble to begin with, and the toe in is not helping if they are that close together. Get a wool area rug at least 5/8" thick or better, and lay that down.....modern carpet is reflective, not absorbing. Wayfair has them for reasonable cost......just make sure they do not have a coated backing.

Look into absorbing panels directly behind the speakers, diffusers behind the listening area, and diffusers at the first reflection point.....that might be a good starting point, and not as expensive as you might expect (GIK Acoustics or the like). As someone previously mentioned, you could have your absorbing panels covered in copies of your posters.

You've already found out that separating the speakers and to toe out, so that's good. Great luck to you

Proper speaker placement, acoustic treatments. If those don't work, no component will fix it. Get new speakers.

About room treatments.. most places will come up with a plan for you after you send them photos and measurements and the web is full of info. Your first reflection point is the biggie. I used Music City Acoustics and it worked out well. Many system pages here will list where they got their treatment panels from. You can also use DSP aka Digital Signal Processing. Some swear by it and others swear at it.