Seeking advice for speakers for my Family Room

Thanks for the quick responses @maxwave and @ditusa .

I was afraid of those answers :-(

Room treatments are a tough sell for the wifey....but I do intend to put blinds on all the windows, add a few paintings etc...maybe a larger rug etc..

I am hearing Focal's are bit brighter sounding than the Sonus Faber's, all else being equal?

What receiver would you suggest? I am still in the return window for my Denon x3700H, I got the 3700H so I could eventually add external amplification.

Forgot to mention that I did run Denon's Audussey MultXT 32 calibration for both the speakers I auditioned.

@carlsbad yes, that is exactly what I intend to do down the road....

@vinylvin I do have the Polks all the way around in my media room, I was going to try and bring those down to the Family Room and try them out..

@auxinput  Will look into Marantz and the discrete analog output

@tony1954 @ricmci @markpop1227  @audiotroy Sounds like I need to attend to the room acoustics first (rather than later).

Will do that and report back.

@singere Meanwhile I found a dealer who actually had the Sonus Faber Lumina V's on the floor, I went by to audition them and I loved them! They didn't have too much in room treatments, so I think with some room treatments (larger rugs, shades/curtains for all windows, some more art or acoustic panels on the walls) with the Lumina V's should be a whole lot better. 

@ronboco I never auditioned Focal's, just went by what I had heard/read about them being brigher (slightly?) than the SF, but man these SF's sounded so good and looked fabulous too.

@searchingforthesound Yes, that is the plan. Another vote for Marantz.

@jonwolfpell @dbensky Thanks for the suggestions/offers, never even heard of some of these speakers. I am still a newbie in this space..:-) 

@soundmd Excellent suggestion on what exactly to do for the room issues. It makes sense to put the speakers wider so that they are in front of the windows for the window treatments to absorb the sound. Will look into acoustic panels, larger rug and artwork on the side wall. The back wall is going to be an issue. Will work on the other things first and see if that makes it acceptable. 

For speakers, i guess it jives well that I loved the SF's, they have the soft dome tweeter!

@sandthemall I pretty much expected to hear it reg the room. 4-5 times larger than the current one? Wow, so the entire surface in front of the speakers should be rug?

I think I can sell that to the wife. Actually, that will help solve the problem of the couch's feet making marks on the white tile! I started looking into vcoustics: https://www.vcoustics.com/, sounds like a whole new thing to research.

Based on all the responses here, I will try and fix my room acoustics first before getting new speakers, thanks all!

For this, do I need to hire an acoustician to tell me what type of acoustic panels go where etc? Sounds like that might be overkill and i would get 80% of the return by just doing the basic things:

-Much larger rug in front of the TV/speaker area going under the couch'

-Add curtains on the windows to the sides of the TV

-Larger wall art on the left side wall

-Re-evaluate. I don't know if I can/want to do anything about the back tile wall. This was the look we wanted...

-Ceiling treatment? What kind?

-Do these wall art panels need to be a certain thickness to be effective at sound absorbtion?

Thanks for all the inputs, all!

Speaker, speaker position:

I think I am leaning towards the Lumina V's which have the reflex port on the bottom i.e. down firing. So, I am thinking I will place these further apart, as you all have suggested, basically in front of the windows, but I would like to place them closer to the wall, I can probably do 1 ft away at the most. I am hoping the down firing bass reflex would help/allow me to get away with that.

Thoughts?

Room treatments:

For the room treatments, i will start with with the a 2" thick acoustic panel on the side wall, probably 48x36, larger/thick rug in front of the speakers.

The larger rug size should cover the area in front of the speakers in their new position (in front of the windows) all the way back to the couches. I am thinking of having this rug go under the front feet of both couches. That should be more than enough? Thickness of 3/4" should do it?

Back wall is going to be tricky to address with the wife. Will start with the above 2 first and see how it goes.

@auxinput Thanks, looking into rugs now. 

@fleschler @maxwave As I mentioned in my OP, I am NOT an audiophile nor am I looking at this room to be my critical listening area. All I am trying to do is to have some extended listening sessions at higher volumes without going deaf/cringing. There isn't much i can do other than room treatments, which I will. The windows, I was planning on covering with shades/drapes regardless.

Hopefully, that should help a lot.

@fleschler No worries. Current issue is just that the speakers sound too bright (even for Klipsch). I have tried Klipsch, KEF and Polk, all of them sounding bright/harsh at higher volumes.

There is a little slap echo on the adjacent section of the room, but not so much in the actual listening area. This is probably because the listening position opens up to the kitchen behind whereas the other section is all enclosed with windows and sliding door.
@ooctaviuss Thanks for the suggestion. but I am pretty much set on the Sonus Faber Lumina V that I auditioned last week and loved. 

@maxwave No way the wife allows that. But are you saying to put the screen at the back of the room so that the listening position/area is NO LONGER OPEN to the kitchen?

I think the kitchen being open is the reason I do NOT get a slap echo in the listening portion of the Family room.

Where I get the slap echo is on the non-listening area where the orange sofas are. And this is due to this area being surrounded/enclosed by the sliding door and 3 large windows...

@auxinput @searchingforthesound @soundmd @sandthemall @fleschler @maxwave 

@b_limo @larry5729 

Thinking ahead a bit. Let's say i have done some room treatments (rugs, acoustic panel or 2 on the side wall, covering the windows with thick drapes, moving the front speakers in front of the now-covered windows etc.

Do you all think I should then invest in a receiver with Dirac Live (since it's considered best room correction software compared to Audussey, YPAO, ARC) vs any others? Thinking along the lines of trying to get all the help I can to address my difficult room.

I have returned my Denon 3700H, so that is no longer a consideration, so, am basically open to any receiver. I don't think i am quite at the level of going seperates, so AVR it is.... I was leaning toward Marantz 5015 (but it only has Audussey XT, not even Audussey XT 32), moving up to 6015 is $2k already...

Any suggestions on the AVR to use? I don't really care about the power of the amp section since I will be getting an external Class D power Amp (like the VTV Purifi stereo or 3 channels) to power my L, C, R anyway. So the AVR will only be powering the surrounds.

Given my speakers are the SF Lumina V (4 ohms)...Listening is HT/Music at 60/40 and would like to play at loud volumes @2.1 or 2 channel audio for parties and such for a few hours at a time....

@auxinput Hmm, interesting. I will be using the receiver's amp section to power at least the surrounds. I would love to buy the older 77xx range processors, but I worry about HDMI 2.1

@soundmd I have taken a look at Anthem's ARX line but they have mixed reviews and they convert the D to A signals using their DAC and don't have analog passthrough, plus software issues. Other than that, I really liked them.

Their processors don't have this limitation, but processors are expensive...!

They also don't have HDMI 2.1 (4k/120) yet...

@maxwave Ya, I think the living room being open to the kitchen helps alleviate the echo effect. Just need to work on reducing reflections from the hard surfaces.

Not too sure how much effect losing the soundstage to the 1 side being open (to the other sitting area with the orange sofas) is having though...

Agree with acoustics with sound level...hopefully, making these room changes will help with that.

@larry5729 I listen to mostly light rock/pop/some instrumental. I am not trying to listen to that last instrument pluck sound to be clear etc., so not too interested in extreme high frequency detail, but do want to be able to hear music at louder volumes for extended periods of time (2-3 hours) from time to time.
This is also not a dedicated music listening room. So, there will be Home Theater use as well, about 60/40 HT/Music maybe 50/50.

@auxinput Thanks, that's exactly what I was thinking/heard that in terms of warmth: Sonus Faber > Wharfedale > KEF > Klipsch in the 3 speaker brands I was considering/looking at. This is also what I have experienced first hand in my room.

Since Marantz and Denon are owned by Sound United, would you say the Denon 3700h would sound similar to the Marantz?

@mesch @sbank Yes, would definitely be adding curtains on the windows, larger rug, but will look into the ATS Acoustics sound absorbing panels as well. 

@carlsbad Not sure what you mean by the last statement.

@bjesien Thanks! Yes, will add those things surely, I already have the Polk PSW505 sub. I just tried it out, there IS a slight slap echo on the right side of the room (the other side of where my HT/audio/listening positions are). Sounds like I will need the sound absorbing panels as well...