Two surprising things I found that improved my imaging and staging...

"It depends" is the fundamental law in small room acoustic for me...Because we must change a room with our ears and for them when listening a SPECIFIC speaker in the room...The frequencies response of the room in the vocal timbre bandwidth is the pilot guide to do this...You "bent" the room to what is better for your ears listening human voice with an active mechanical modification of the pressure zones distribution grid in the room not only with panels reflective, absorbing and diffusive in a passive treatment......

Why human voice?

Because the inner relation we have with all acoustical cues linked to the timbre of a human voice and his MEANING for us...All of us we can identify a correct timbre FOR EACH ONE OF US but which will not be "exactly" the same for none others save us...Then our small room must be fine tuned for our own ears/speakers specifically for a better human voice and instrument recognition when playing a note...

A great musical hall is not a small room....Acoustic laws cannot be used in the same way in this 2 cases....For example the use of reverberation time and the timing of the different first wavefronts cannot be the same in a great Hall and in my 13 feet square room...

No recipe works well for all small room because of their different geometry, topology and acoustical varied content...

No recipe will never compete or replace fine tuning of the small room...

But at the end this fine tuning of passive acoustic treatment and active mechanical control of any small room is the greater of all audio possible improvement with a specific pair of speakers...Greater than most upgrades of gear ....

Small room acoustic must be designed for specific speakers in specific small room...

A "tweak" like putting a rug can help, but we are short of a true fine tuning with some easy recipe of this nature only... Fine tuning is related to listening experiments and time but at possible low cost in my experience....

And any electronical equalization is a TOOL, not the solution at all...

For sure a dedicated audio room is the only essential  luxury in audiophile world...

I am not a scientist, but it is my experience with my room...

And it’s a whole lot of fun to play with setup! :)

I will not call connecting and disconnecting highly cosly amplifiers or speakers one after the other "fun" save for a reviewer perhaps...

It is more fun to reach OPTIMAL S.Q. for a chosen system in a chosen room,for my "chosen" ears, studying acoustic with information, experiments and listenings...

After all, really creating  a good setup has nothing to do with changing components each month....

But perhaps it is me who are crazy, or worst, too poor to buy all these stuff...Then in the obligation to resolve myself and my thinking to be  about  less elevated "high end" matter than a new piece of gear : acoustic...
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All this from system that costs less than $500 and no ac treatments or room treatments?

No you are wrong here...

My room is treated completely with passive reflective diffusive and absorbing surfaces...

Not only that but my room is actively controlled by a grid of more than 40 tuned Helmoltlz resonators and diffusers ... I call that a "mechanical equalizer" created after Helmoltz method and many over devices ( a Schuman generators grid and a ionizers grid etc) i will not spoke about here all of my creations homemade.... I dont bought tweaks , i create mine...


My motto is:

Dont upgrade BEFORE embedding mechanically against vibration and electrically decreasiing the HOUSE noise floor, and especially never before working passively with acoustic material surfaces and actively with Helmholtz mechanical devices control your room...

I can only say this, and I’m not being facitious, I’m rather envious of you. Perhaps, my obsession and others, with reaching for highest sound quality has all been a waste of time. Just as with the phantom center image, it’s all delusion anyway. If I had the perceptive powers you have I needn’t have spent all this money and obsessed over every single detail in this needless pursuit.

You could be envious in a way,   because even if  my low cost well chosen system is not the best ever, most people here own better system than mine but they are not well embedded and especially put on non treated and non controlled room acoustically, my system though is one of the best possible for his PRICE/S.Q. ratio....

This is the reason why i smile at the idea to upgrade my system ...

I already calculated the cost for a true upgrade from my system of 500 bucks : 15,000 us dollars at least and perhaps more for example from my Sansui AU 7700 to a Berning ZOTL 40 amplifier...

But this upgrade even if it will be a real one is not so much appealing because of what i really already have for the price of peanuts...

Audiophile experience is mainly acoustic for at least the bigger half part.... 😁😊

Marketing is not science.... Acoustic is a science...

Speaker placement charts should all be taken with a grain of salt, including Cardas. None of them can take in account what kind of acoustic treatment you got in your room or the type of furniture and any other artifacts you may have including anything you hang on your walls. Meaning you may have a starting speaker placement with a chart reflecting the size of your room, but in the end you will have to move the speakers around little by little trusting your ears and the toe-in will end up being the most critical decision you make. Be patient, learn about YOUR system and take the time to ENJOY the journey. Being an audiophile is all about testing your system for your ears and not about finding a magic formula on paper.

 What a marvellous post...

Wise and well written....

My deepest respect to you.....

And don’t have any equipment on high racks between speakers. Not having anything other than room treatments between speakers is perhaps the most important thing in getting 3d imaging. You can have equipment low to ground, anything higher than 20" or so starts affecting my sound stage.

My speakers are on my desk and between them there is a dac and amplifier and the computer screen.... 😁😁😁😁

The 3-D imaging dont comes from the interaction between the 2 speakers, but from the interaction between the speakers and the content and form of the room and his acoustical settings...

I own an under 500 bucks system which is able to give me a soundstage filling the room... A 3-d imaging which is spectacular in my 2 listening positions on the same level : near listening and regular listening...

The opposite impression about the necessity of an empty void between speakers comes from the fact that most people ignore the fact that what we are listening to is a complex set of waves crossing the average small room 15 times a fraction of second, then we never listen to an abstract addition of sound waves coming directly from the 2 speakers for sure, we listen to our entire system speakers/room with a complex grid pf pressure zones emerging and distributed in all the room in all directions......

For sure it is better or easier to have an empty space between the speakers but we can compensate by acoustic controls...

Another myth is the claim that near listening eliminate the room problem.... It is completely false in small room... We listen to ALL the room even at 3 feet of the speakers.... The ears/brain "compute" all the room pressuring zones content to create sound...

My acoustical material treatment and active acoustical controls modification in my room transformed completely the imaging, timbre perception and other acoustic qualities EVEN at my 3 feet listening from the speakers and on the same level of improvement than at my regular 8 feet location in my 13 feet "bad" small square room......