Is my listening geometry too small?


I have Axiom 22Ti speakers (TMM type) on 15 " stands.
As my room is very small, I have to sit very close to speakers.

Speaker are about 6-7' apart, each of them are a few feet from side and rear wall (equatorial triangle).

I toe them in a bit. (I try toe them in a lot, but feel that it's too bright.)

Is my sitting setup to small to obtain good sound stage and sound quality?

I listen to mostly vocal and chamber musics with some pop/rock and classical. I listen to moderate level, not lound at all.

I would like to hear some thought before putting lot of effort to rearrange my room.

Thanks a lot,

Ake
ake
My room is about 13'x15' speakers are placed along the 13' side. I use only half of the room for listening set up. The other half is for my bed.

I sit about 7' away from each speakers (equilateral triangle). I am about 7' away from the back wall.

Thanks a lot for all suggestion.

Ake
From everything I've read and per my interpretation of it ... A small room will produce more standing waves than a larger room (all dimensional ratios equal), which leads to peaks and valleys of sound in the bass region (up to about 300 Hz give or take). The character of the standing waves depends on the room dimensions. From this perspective, the room size has more affect than the placement of the speakers. The speaker placement does have a strong effect on how and when the music reaches your ears from a reflection perspective. This affects perceived soundstage and varies by speaker design and surface treatments in your room. You seem to have a very reasonable and appropriate setup. If you want to experiment, I'd suggest moving the speakers around a bit (one foot here, two feet there) and toeing them in, flat and out to hear what happens. Don't rearrange the whole room just yet.

My best loved musical experience has been in a small room with handbuilt cabinets, professional JBL speakers, McIntosh amp, Crown preamp and turntable. We were nowhere near ideal positional ratios (the proverbial equalateral triangle) and it sounded great. The cheapest tweak possible is simply moving the speakers around. Try it ... you might like it. Happy listening.
The above observations are all correct and give good sound advice. I have been plagued by problematic rooms and acoustic situations for many years. Try a few of these and see if you get any better results. Make very small adjustments at a time inches not feet. Start your set-up from the rear wall first for good bass support and depth. Move speakers apart until center fill falls away. If center fill erodes, move them a little closer together. Adjust listening position according to best results. Try speakers on different walls if possible for best results. Try speakers pointing straight ahead and then toe-in just and inch or two per adjustment. Other mathematical and acoustic information is available on the net. Hope this helps. It's worth the trouble if you get it right!
I guess this thread applies to me as well...my room is really small...and i sleep nearly under my speakers....
i dont have a choice, because, this is my dream system...and would rather wait for a bigger house/room/studio than buy a lesser system
i love my system
Ozfly is right. It's pretty easy to calculate the mode response of a room. The formula is on our website. You can go to http://www.rivesaudio.com/LRframes.html and click on the modes and that will show the formula. There's also a section on speaker placement and a short paper on tuning speaker placement. It is not formula based, as we have found too many variations in different forumlas with different types of speakers. We can calculate locations based on the speaker, but then we always use a variation of this method for final tuning. The method described can be used entirely for speaker placement. Another good resource is the CARA CD (we also sell it--so I am biased here). It's very helpful with speaker and listener placement and looking at where nodes and peaks of certain frequencies exist. Lastly, I would suggest that the room is part of the system. Subdoofus you do have a great system in terms of components, but the room could be 90% of the limitations (I don't know more about the room that what you've stated). The point is that the room needs to be considered as in integral part of the system. Many people don't do this and wonder why their expensive systems don't sound like they did in a dealer's showroom.