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Room help

I'm new to this.  I have of late been fascinated reading here about the room as one, if not the principal, component of a well tuned audio system.  More recently I chanced upon a discussion about irregular rooms perhaps lending towards the best sound.  

Well, I have an irregular room.  It is approximately 15' x 27' with an 8' ceiling.  It has a trapezoidal cross section (sitting on the top floor of my home under the eves), has a dormer and a staircase up from the lower level at one end.  At one end the wall is brick and the other three are plaster.  Carpeted.

I have my listening area set up on one end of the long axis (oriented transversely along the short axis of the room if that makes sense) .  The speakers are 9' apart and 8' from me.  Few feet from the front wall. Today I rotated everything 90 degrees so that now the speakers are facing out along the long axis of the room.  The speakers are still 9' apart and 8' from me.  But the back wall is now some 18' behind me instead of 4'.

The sound is much better.  I've been listening for hours (with a pause for food, saying hello to visiting relatives, assuring my wife I'm still alive, and such).   More "spacious" is the best word I can use to describe it.   The soundstage is bigger.  

However,  this layout is much less pleasing from an aesthetic standpoint (please don't judge me harshly on this).  Soooooo.... my question is: Is there a way to recapture this improvement in some way while maintaining the original orientation of the room (across the short axis of the room)? 

Thanks for reading and I eagerly await any responses.

likat

Showing 2 responses by ghdprentice

ghdprentice
6,473 posts
 

My feeling is you can replicate better sound in your earlier orientation. Here is what I think… you can see my room under my ID. Consider putting up some photos.

 

First… if possible put the brick in front (to quiet the sound stage)… but also cover with a sound absorber (I use a heavy wool tightly knit carpet)… this will improve depth of image as well as widen.. You want to highly dampen the wall behind you. I suspect this is where you are really losing in terms of this location. Only an amp in between speakers. Heavy carpet between speakers and you.

That is the “big” stuff. Then you really want to fine tune… a diffusion tube behind each speaker and center behind amp. Tube traps in corner. Absorption bolsters along wall floor corner in front of listening wall. Finally corner diffusers at all wall - ceiling corners.

ghdprentice
6,473 posts
 

OP,

 

In addition to moving stuff around, you can use stuff around the house to simulate treatments. Like a heavy throw rug hung over a ladder… cloth covered chair with towels in reflection points. Etc.

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