Hi David12,
Do you have any acoustic room treatents?
Sorry to mention this if you already know, but a perfectly square room(20'x20') is about the worst acoustic environment possible under any circumstances.
As great as the sound you've gotten used to seems to be, I bet you will be apalled by the actual in-room response you are getting. I know I was, check out
my System listed here for some quick
graphical freq. test results.
The traits that you find lacking in the Living Voice could be due to extreme room colorations, modal ringing, and time-decay. Before investing ~$5,000 on new speakers which will be subject to same overriding forces, take a some time and spend a few dollars to do proper frequency, time-delay, etc. types of acoustic tests.
There is a simple method for doing frequency tests by hand with a cheap $30 Radio Shack SPL meter, it is reasonable accurate, yet time consuming. The much more accurate and simple method is to use $150 software like
ETF 5, which provide far more information than simple frequency response. You get
1/3 octave frequecy repsonse,
unsmoothed Freq resp., and most importantly
3-D graphs which show resonances, ringing, and decay time.
I wish I had used ETF right off the bat because it would have saved me literally months of frustration arranging, then rearranging, my room trying to get optimal sound. At one point, I was very, very, close to selling some of Cain & Cain's best speakers before a friend from Audio Asylum came over and pointed out my severe room colorations.
Now, I realize that no matter speakers I placed in the room, those problems would have still existed and dominated reporduction. Since then, I've discovered the beauty, simplicity, and power of room treatments - especially bass traps which actually help high frequecies too.
Just soem food for thought.
