Please help with room setup... thanks

I have a similar configuration with my room. Curtains are good for the glass, better than nothing. I have set up, behind the speakers on the short wall, bookcases. A friend of mine had a beautiful, rich sounding room with a few rugs, furnature, and a wide book case behind the speakers...a wall of books. The random pattern of the books, uneven surfaces, help to dampen reflection. The do cause small amounts of diffraction and deconstructive interference in an uncontrolled way, but it is a dramatic, practical, and not bad looking way to help with a sharp, cold, reflective room. Also, books go well with music, and helps you to spend more time enjoying music, and not focusing on the technical details of the sound.

The room is *the component. Everything else is secondary.

Research and experimentation w/ speaker placement.

are your speakers on the long wall???
may want to consider having them on the long wall in front of the curtain if possible

see the carda website or threads on speaker placement
shortfield equilateral triangle setup works wonders

also clap your hands in the room
is it a lively room with echo or fairly dead???

what floor and wall materials do you have on the other walls?

Tom

My advice is to recognize that room treatment (and vibration control) can make a huge impact on your system. Until you work on this, you are not getting the best from your equipment. So treat this as carefully and thoroughly as any component choice. I ended up spending much more on room treatment than I had in mind, but it has been worth every cent. Be prepared to noodle this for quite a while, as the combinations and placement of absorbtion and diffusion are trial and error. Having said that, though, there are some fancy computer programs out there that should take some of the guess work out of it. My sense from reading about them is that they are just as much work as trial and error, but your results will be perhaps less random.

It is very difficult to set up a room correctly, for the
simple reason that room boundaries limit the preformance of
your equiptment. Acoustic treatment helps, especially corner treatments. side panels to catch the first reflection off your speakers. Also if you want to improve
the appearence of your room & help to acoustically treat,
Tapestries. These are drop dead gorgerous & help in sound. I have a large one on my back wall & it helps alot. Heirloom European Tapestries 1 800 699-6836, you can get some really nice stuff, but beware you think your stereo rig was expensive !

Sandle:

Go to the audioasylum.com home page and open up the Rives Audio chatroom/forum.

I forgot to list the speakers. They are the Sonus Faber Cremona Amators. (Two way monitors).