Audioguy85, if you want to see the issue get a calibrated microphone and an impulse measurement program. Guaranteed to drop your shorts.
I just finished setting up new speakers (Sound Labs 645-8s, an 845 that is 4 inches narrower) You can see the old curves on my system page. The new ones look almost exactly the same except I have a huge peak between 100 and 200 Hz. It is the rear wave bouncing off the wall and coming back in phase at this frequency. I can change it by moving the speakers or just use room control or both. But, the high frequency aberrations that you see in the old curves are exactly the same. +- 10 dB and each speaker totally different. The room is 16 X 8 with no back wall (open to the rest of the house) The first 8 feet from the speakers is totally symmetrical then there is a window on the right and an alcove on the left.
The point being other than lack of a back wall there is nothing special about this room. This is way beyond the difference you would find between good electronics and sources. The asymmetry kills imaging. You can hear this instantly by switching room control in and out. This is what rooms do and there is no getting away from it other than messing around with room treatments. Room control has it's limits. If there is too big a dip, particularly in the bass the unit will clip trying to fix it (sounds like burping). If the peak is too high you loose resolution turning down the volume. Most room control units work a 48 bits or above so you can loose a fair amount before getting into audible trouble. You use room treatments to get close and Room Control to get the stragglers. You will never know what is going on and what you are doing with room treatments without a measurement microphone. If you think your room is even close to remotely flat, guess again. If you think you can use your hearing to fix this? Your hearing has accommodated to an aberrant frequency response curve. You have to listen to flat for a while to re-train your hearing even if you do not like it. I don't. I purposely boost the very low bass and put a 3 dB dip in centered on 120 Hz. This gives me the dry vibrant bass that I like. I also roll off the high end a little. Flat is usually too bright. When I first lit up these speaker the bass was so fat it was choking everything else. It was one of those, "what the F--- have I done," moments. Boy, do these things make bass. The baffle effect of the large speaker is impressive. The rear wave does not cancel out and it comes back at you almost doubling the volume somewhere between 80 and 300 Hz depending on how far the speaker is from the wall. I have 4" acoustic foam tiles behind the speaker which prevents the reflection of everything above 250 Hz actually making the bass problem worse! The peak at higher frequencies is not as bad so moving the speakers closer to the wall, turning the bass level control on the back of the speaker down all the way, Putting the subwoofer crossover point at 120 Hz 8 dB down by raising the high pass filter to 130 Hz and lowering the low pass filter to 110 Hz fixed 90% of the problem finishing off with room control. Now, we be rockin!
