Speaker placement Quandary

I really love the red room light and curious to know how you achieve it. Because it’s getting closer to Christmas maybe you should enhance the room with some green lighting too . My thought is to introduce a few pieces of furniture into the room to get rid of the open space and you have a lot of acoustical stuff going on in the room especially in the rear wall. I think furniture spread throughout the room is the best diffuser in the world.  I've always wondered what a few diffuser panels on the wall really really do, most of the time it's a waste of effort unless you can find something looks really nice on your wall. I think all the acoustical stuff may be deadening the sound.  My basement wall offers lovely texture from a plaster cement finish and that's an amazing place for the system but the ceiling height is 7 feet, the materials that were used the ceiling tiles compressed board fiber material have done really well for me.  Maybe remove some of the acoustical stuff.

Maybe the rear speakers should be closer to the back wall with a gap of three or four feet.

Do you do any DSP curves to measure the sound in your room? Before and after. I don't know too many people who actually do this because those dsp software packages are incredibly difficult to work with. The interfaces are horrifying and then you have lots of signal errors when you're doing test. Wish someone would do better job with this DSP stuff

Great thread!  Good resources, suggestions. I saw an intriguing suggestion a couple years ago about setting your system up diagonally in the room. So instead of facing a wall from the listening position, you face a corner. I can’t try this for technical, architectural, and marital reasons. Wondering if anyone on this thread has?

I am using an Anti-Mode 2.0 Dual Core room correction device that covers the entire sound spectrum....but I only use it for signals at 200 Hz or lower. I also use one SVS 4000 sub for frequencies below 45 Hz. The main speakers are Harbeth 40.1's arranged about 9 feet apart(4 feet from the backwall) into a very large room. The resultant sound is truly spectacular

That's a well set up room and looks well planned.

Did a ton of research myself on equipment placement (see my systems page).

Several generalities apply:

Each room and speaker set up is unique and no specific set up is best in all cases.

Most speakers sound better away from room boundaries.

Source and amp equipment is best placed along side walls or on floor behind speakers.

Listening position in the room is possibly the most important factor and is dictated by bass room modes.  The smoothest and best bass determines the listening spot.

Adjust initial speaker position partly based on listening position and partly on bass smoothness.

Use toe and tilt and fine movements of the speaker to "lock in" imaging. 

The smaller the room the greater the challenges.

One of the best systems I've ever heard was at Jeff Catalano's flat (High Water Sound).  In that system, the speakers were positioned along the short wall in a room approximately 50 feet long by 16 feet wide by 14 feet high.  The speakers were approximately 8 feet center to center apart, about 15 feet from front wall and about 12 or more feet to the listening position.  I estimate that the listening spot was 35% or so into the room from the back wall.  Of note, other than about 20,000 lp's (not kidding) flanking both side walls floor to ceiling, and 2-foot deep beams along the length of said ceiling, no room treatments were in use. 

Of note Jeff's rooms are typically the best or among the best at shows worldwide, so the guy knows what he's doing.  Study some photos from his set ups (google) for tips/hints.

The Jim Smith book also a great resource.