Speakers least affected by room acoustics

Sorry to have to chime in guys, we have owned line arrays, diapoles and most of the kinds of loudpeakers out there.

30 years plus of professional experience here.

If you have a high ceiling there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO, other than use room treatments. Period.

A good rug can help, which will absorb some of the enegy that would bounce up but that is it.

If you hang a treatment off of the ceiling you will eliminate slap echo but you don't want to do that. 

Electronic room correction, diapoles and line arrays will not eliminate slap echo. Electronic rooom correction can tune out frequency peaks and valleys to ensure a flater frequency response, no room correction system unless it was in real time and could identify direct sound vs reflected sound and be able to filter out the reflected sound.

If you have large parallel surfaces sound will bounce off the floor, travel to the ceiling and bounce down, no loudspeaker in the world can eliminate that.

Atttractive room treatment panels like Contuzzi suggested will help to absorb some reflected sound which would help the sound of the room but not fix it entirely.

A diapole will eliminate side to side reflections as a diapole has a figure 8 radiation pattern. Even a speaker with narrow vertical radiaton patttern which is a diappolito array will eliminate sound bouncing off the floor in an untreated room it can help though.

A line arry provides very even pressurization but still will suffer from floor bounce.

Your best case senario use an attractive floor covering with an acoustical matt, and use speakers which are diappolito designs and get the speakers closer to your ears in a nearfield arrangement.

Larson at least works with controlled dispersion if you have the corners free and do sound excellent, however, the floor bounce issue/reflected ceiling will stlll make the room sound too live.

So if you want to do the maximum:

1: Rug with acoustical matting
2: Diapollito speakers
3: Near field listening
4: Room correction to help flatten any frequency issues which would arrise from any of the above.

Good luck.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Leotis, and Mirolab, 

A live reflective space will still be affected by directional speakers, Almost all loudspeakers even with horn loading of the tweeter still throw out an abundance of energy.

If you remember physics energy can not be created or destroyed.

You can turn vibrational energy into heat by absorption.

You can direct the sound of a directional loudspeaker toward the listener however, unless the listener's body is a complete broad based absorber sound frequencies will still bounce off his body, any hard reflective surfaces and the floor, hit the ceiling and bounce back.

If the room sounds live it is called slap echo and you have to use absorbtive materials to combat that. 

Sandydennis, glad to hear they work well in your room, a small uneven room is not a large reflective room, totally different set of problems. 

Bryanbull, did you notice we were saying the same thing the D'appolito configuration was designed to eliminate ceiling and floor bounce however, even a speaker with a narrowed vertical dispersion can't eliminate floor bounced reflections.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Recordchanger we work with major celebs and work in multi million dollar homes.

Please PM us and we can show you how to do it tastefully,

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ