What affects front to back depth in room/ system?

It's probably already been said, but FWIW real 'depth of image' is captured in the recording process. If it ain't there it ain't going to be anywhere.

In a carefully set up two channel system all you get is what is on the recording. There are many variations of what folks think is soundstage mostly depending on how they use their room in their set up and think what they have achieved is really the 'depth of image' so often referred to by folks, it's not. That sound is only the result of management of the rooms construction, size, speaker placement, reflections, and nulls/nodes, etc. 

If you want to see how your system reproduces true depth of image get yourself a recording that has it in the first place. I always recommend Opus 3's "Depth of Image" on an LP if you can use it or CD. IF your system is properly set up its sound will blow you away. It's just amazing! This recording is a compilation of classical, jazz, pop, taken from their recording of such music from their other recordings. Their mic set up is simple and 'correct'. The manual will discuss all of the cuts and tell you what you should hear - if you can't detect all that they tell you exists, then you know that you need to adjust your setup to get there. High quality equipment may help some, but a reasonably good system can get you there. 

@dsnyder0cnn 

Thank you for your post. I appreciate your foot covers.

@dsnyder0cnn my room measures 15’x19’ (4.57m x 5.79m).

The front of the speakers are 4’6" (1.37m) from the front wall. Middle of tweeter left speaker to middle of tweeter right speaker is 7’8" (2.3m). side of speaker to each side wall is 4’11" (1.5m). Ear in the listening position to front of speaker baffle (tweeters are at ear level) is around 9’3 (2.8m)" -same for left and right. I have about 2’ (.6m) from ears to the back wall.

The speakers are about 1 1/2’(.45m) closer together than what it would take to make an equilateral triangle, but this is where they work best (keeping the biggest emphasis on best bass and the right size mouth I hear singing the song).

@wolf_garcia ​​​​and @tablejockey I was just spinning the UHQR Aja tonight (just got it after seeing them with the Eagles last week). Man, if everything sounded as good as that album does, I wouldn’t need to fiddle with all these fidly bits.

@skinzy I’m starting to think the same thing. I’m really curious to see what the difference will be after I treat the room though.

@axeis1 I have Robert Harley’s book (which is pretty great) and of course Paul McGowans- which was quite helpful at the beginning.

@labpro Thanks for mentioning Acoustical Sciences Corporation. I checked out their tube traps a while ago, and was seriosuly considering those.

While we’re here- I’ve been thinking about going with Acoustic Fields (Dennis is who suggested I move speakers from the short wall to the long wall instead...which was a great improvement. The only thing is I don’t see any posts on here about them, but see some of the others. Does anyone here have experience dealing with Acoustic Fields/ Dennis or opinions/ feedback?

I don't think this can be oversimplified. It is a combination  of things. 

* speaker placement

* room treatment

*speaker isolation

* recording styles or techniques

*cabling

*music service 

*low noise in signal

I believe it is a combination of things.  Each helps but it is the cumulative result.

@veerossi - thanks for those dimensions. I don't see any issues. You are kind-of close to the back wall, but that's way better than sitting in the middle of the room, where you would experience bass nulls. Your gear looks great to me, so next steps are probably room treatment, as others have recommended.

Working out how much treatment is needed and where to place it is not rocket science. A few measurements from your listening position using Room EQ Wizard and a calibrated mic (eg., miniDSP UMIK-1) will tell you just about all you need to know. Feel free to PM me if I can help.

I am fortunate to have a relatively large dedicated listening room which allows for proper distances from the walls, This, along with abundant acoustic treatment provides for an immersive experience. I also use a distributed bass array akin to the Audiokinesis Swarm and I find that it further makes an enormous contribution to soundstage and depth.

https://youtu.be/gcf1Hp_oAv4?feature=shared

I think the speakers have the most to do with it. Mind you I don't have a high-end system but when pitting kef r11's non meta against everything in the room at magnolia, one thing I noticed was that the kefs had an unusually deep sound stage..I wasn't listening for it, I just noticed it, and it was the first time I ever heard a deep sound stage and as you probably know all of the speakers are very close to the rear wall in Magnolia I ultimately chose them over theB&W 702s2s I have them set up in-between 2 rooms with about 12 feet behind them, using a Denon 4308, similar to the Marantz that they use in Magnolia, so nothing special.. the recording has a lot to do with it I found that with live jazz I can easily pick out the location of the instruments. Some many feet back,The whole sound is very layered.. and as one other reader had said, shutting your eyes makes a big difference especially at night.

@veerossi 

I consulted with Dennis at acoustic fields before I built my dedicated room. He seemed very knowledgeable but said I would need about 35k to build the room. That was out of my budget. He also said my speakers would not work in a room my size. I went with an acoustician recommended by Duke LeJeune of audiokinesis to design my room and am extremely happy with the result. 

You need to listen to Diana Krall all the time if you wanna listen to things with sound depth . Most of the time I find it's the quality of recording that makes all the difference in the world despite whatever equipment you have 

Just a follow up: I got the sound I was looking for. Here’s are the 5 changes I needed to do bridge the gap:

I’m not sure if it’s ok to mention names and models of items here or if it’s frowned upon, so I’ll leave it out to be safe. If ok and info is desired, let me know and I’ll post em’.

Each of these were performed 1 at a time to ensure I can identify changes (good or bad) or if no change. I then listen for a couple days to assess/ evaluate the 1 tweak, then would move onto the next one.

First: the main speakers needed a litle bit more toe-in and had to be spread a little farther apart. More coherent and focus in center image, improved bass, less side wall reflections.

2nd: upgraded from one good power cable on my pre-amp to the latest/greatest of the same model. It immediately sounded better and cast a huge soundstage, but was also a little bit thinner sounding and "phasey" sounding at the same time (compared to the old one). After 3 days of listening, it settled in and again and the thin and phasey issues were gone. What was left is better bass and I can hear soft quiet sounds in music I couldn’t make out before (during parts of songs where there is whispering etc) I can now hear the words. Crazy!

3rd: (buckle-in): I changed the stock fuse in my streamer/DAC to a "fancy-pants" fuse. This was an incredible improvement in bass, noise floor reduced, better imaging, layering, and depth. I can’t friggin’ believe it. I used this same very fuse in an integrated tube amp I have since sold and I don’t recall it making that much of an improvement like it did to my streamer/DAC. This upgrade made me stop looking at the next upgrade. I’m happy again with this streamer/DAC again. This fuse upgrade just saved me an s-load of $.

4th upgraded 2 already decent power cables on my class d mono block amps to the next models up. I had a feeling these might have been the bottleneck. and I suspected correctly. These weren’t exactly cheap to upgrade. This tweak made the biggest difference of them all.

Lastly, I experimented with moving one of my subs out of the corner of the front wall and put it on a small solid wood table/stand about 2’ off the ground. The table was about the same size as the sub. This smoothed out the bass in the room, but also took away some of the punch. I then took it off the floor and found a spot in the room where the sub responded positively/ improving the upper mid and bottom end. I ended up placing it just off to the outside of the right speaker about a 1’ away and just behind it. I then tuned both subs so one is crossed over for more of the rock bottom and the other one a little higher to get more punch and chestiness.

I’m now contemplating picking up a couple more of those fuses for the mono blocks. I’m finally at a point now where gear is done. I feel that the gear and setup and tweaks was the first 50% and this is now mostly optimized/ as good as it’s going to get. Now onto the next frontier/ other 50%: room treatment. I need to learn REW to take RT60 and measure bass etc. I’m pretty good with computers/apps, but this one is a bit intimidating. Any help here would be appreciated. I already have the U-mik-1 and a mic stand and laptop ready to go.

@veerossi Please consider trying 2 Swiss Digital Fuse Boxes, it replaces the skinny wire fuse with a solid copper rod which can pass tons more current and uses a microprocessor to sense current and protect your gear, you can change values and it can trip without breaking unlike a fancy fuse.

OP,

‘Thank you very much for the follow up comments. It is great to hear what it takes to get improvements. 
 

Please mention the brands and models of the cables and other equipment you used, this is the most valuable information. It is highly encouraged. This is why there is a place to show photos and to identify brand and model of all your equipment. Please share.

@klh007 Thank you for the recommendation. I'm happy where I'm at currently with the fuse situation, but will definitely keep it in mind if (when) I get upgraditis later on. 

@ghdprentice 

Preamp: I went from a Shunyata Delta NR (v1) to same cable but the most current version (v2). 

Mono block power cables x2: I went from Shunyata Venom V10 NR to Shunyata Delta NR (v1)

Fuse in pre-amp: stock to Synergistic Research Purple

Fuse in streamer/dac: stock to Synergistic Rearch Orange

😊👍