Speakers that sound great in terrible rooms

KR at stereophile has been reviewing dsp based speakers. anthem arc, dirac, all the dsp software that measures and tunes the bass help., but the easiest solution thats free bepoletti said already, nearfield listening.

Here is a line array from ex-McIntosh speaker designer Roger Rusell I've wanted to hear.

I have to say I've heard current XRT speakers and really did not like them, but this is a much more simple implementation.

http://roger-russell.com/columns/columns.htm#ids

Hi all.  I'm new to Audiogon and have done more reading than writing.  I tend to believe (would that qualify as IMO?) that a well designed speaker will perform well, more or less, in a wide variety of rooms.  The better the room is for sound quality the better that speaker will sound.  And of course, what you kit is comprised of plays a role, too.  More importantly, enjoying the music, with the kit you have and in the room you have, is what it's all about.  Of course, tweaking and tuning to within what is realistic in your life, goes a long way.  Much better than ignoring the room altogether.  But, enjoying the music is surely what it's all about.  Back to a well designed speaker... I do like the approach that Dynaudio takes.  They make wonderful sounding drivers, all engineered and manufactured in-house, providing them with the ability to control the end result in a superior way than many other speakers brought to market.  Then, they engineer the given enclosure for those drivers from a total "system" approach to the finished product.  This includes engineering the front baffle for directionality and, therefore, room interaction = acoustics at your ear.  
Anyway, that's my two cents on this matter.  There are many wonderful products on the market.  Make your kit, work with your room the best that you can, and enjoy the music.

Hi @mammouthguy54

I like Dynaudio a lot, but they have different house curves built in. I’ve seen W and V shaped curves built into different models, so none of them are the speakers I've heard are true neutral speaker that lets me listen to a variety of music in a variety of volume levels without that Dynaudio personality.

When listening you have to take this into account. Make sure the house sound is something you can live with, which I guess is the same advice as for most speakers. :)

Best,

E

I am probably limiting the sound quality I get by the room situation I have.  But how bad is bad?  I am aware of sound optimization for surround sound (e.g., Audyssey), but is there optimization for two channel set-ups?  I guess I’m lazy about moving speakers around (not sure what I would do if I knew the best arrangement), but it would still be interesting to me to see what such a optimizing program would recommend.