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Best Speaker Choice for my very "non-audio-friendly" Living Room

New to A-Gon, and looking for advise on purchasing a set of speakers.
My room is about as sound stage unfriendly as you can imagine (Hard to describe) as the center of the room is a huge fireplace with speaker placement options limited to about 25' apart from each other on each side of the fireplace. The room is approx 30' by 14' so my listening distance from each speaker is 15' & 16' from my center chair.
With that said, I have always (maybe wrongly) been inclined to buy big powerful speakers in an attempt to fill the room with good sound.
Up til now I have been running an Anthem 540 Amp, and running my fronts through a Peachtree 500 from the Pre-Outs on the Anthem to a set of Cerwin Vega Twin 15's. I actually liked the sound of this setup, but the twin 15s were just huge and honestly obnoxious on the living room (my wife had a stronger opinion on that than I did lol) 
So, I have moved the big Vega's down to the shop / pool room  and thats where they will live with a modest emotiva amp/pre amp combo that works well. 
I like the option of a Klipsch Cornwall (old school look, but much shorter and more esthetically appealing than the Vega's or maybe a set of Focal 948's which I listened to at the local shop. Both of these options are in my price range, and I "think" would give me the sound / performance I loved with my Old Vega's but look much better in the room. 
Any advice from the experts on this forum would be greatly appreciated. 
 
carzmaguy88

Showing 3 responses by motokokusanagi

motokokusanagi
189 posts
 
This is a rather wide criteria except "quite big" and up to the budget of the Cornwalls. 

Is imaging a big thing? Have you considered open baffles like Spatials?
https://www.spatialaudiolab.com/models

Then again, if you've demoed some models you like already, that's worth a lot.
motokokusanagi
189 posts
 
An open baffle is a strong choice as it directly seeks to address the acoustic problems with the directivity of box speakers in a problematic room.

Here’s the late, great Siegfried Linkwitz discussing the same https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrxwudn7C4w

My concern is audition/demo is more important than anything else, so you’d want to be able to listen/return anything you are seriously shortlisting; especially for this price.
motokokusanagi
189 posts
 
This is definitely a very challenging room. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/9787#&gid=1&pid=1

You need really good off-axis dispersion and immunity from reflection, so I’m even more inclined to say you should just eliminate normal box speakers from consideration as a starting point. I think open baffles and omnis are the way to go. Again, demo/return capability is a must.
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