Geoffkait, just happened to be looking at old threads, and saw your response from 3 years ago, and laughed.
I didn’t mean MY room was small: I was curious about rooms that were smaller and the results of others. I’ve had - with different systems - extremely sharp, focused imaging in this very same room, but that was with the speakers aligned along the short walls. Never did figure out why the long wall problem occurred, except, at the time, the speaker cables, which are only 2 meters long, didn’t allow for a great deal of variation in placement along the long walls and I was using an integrated amp instead of my ASL Hurricanes, which focus astoundingly well.
Still, it’s interesting to see the response of others. When I lived in San Francisco, my room was 2 rooms combined, with open space on either side of the archways into the second room (kind of a parlor/dining room combined, as frequently happened in Edwardian architecture, I was told by a friend who knew about the construction used in Victorian/Edwardian periods). The room was 10(h) x 13 (w) by 27 (l). So, somewhat similar to this room except for length, and that the other room was Edwardian period construction, so the ceiling curved down to the side walls, instead of sharp corners at the wall/ceiling interface, and between the two rooms, the ceiling came down to 8’ height on top of the two columns that divided the rooms. And the construction was plaster instead of the drywall construction in this house (which we moved into right after it was built in the '60s),
In the basement of this ranch-style house in Connecticut, belonging to my family, where I first set up the stereo 13 years ago, the dimensions are 7 1/2’(h) x 23 (w) by 45 (l) the sound is astonishingly open and airy. I would’ve expected the low ceiling height to sabotage the sound - and it did for a while, especially in the lower midrange/upper bass - but i looked up one day and realized that perhaps putting some insulation in between the joists might benefit the sound. Lord, did it ever! The suckout was completely gone and the placement (fantastic layering) and realism of the Hurricanes made me understand what HP was talking about when he lauded them.
The problem with the basement is: 1) it gets pretty cold in the winter and 2), it sometimes still floods, even with the "moat" my mother had installed around the perimeter of the walls. Otherwise, I’d never have done an ASC Wall damp construction in the 13 x 20 room when we did an addition to the house. That room has NEVER equalled the basement in sound quality - and the basement has concrete walls, although I placed tube traps along the back and side walls around the speakers and it was enough! Larger rooms can have fewer problems, according to F. Alton Everest, the master acoustician.
But, I must have been pretty clumsy in my phrasing if I gave the impression I thought my room was "small." Not what I meant.
