"Rooms with open floor plans and cathedral ceilings tend to less than optimal for serious listening."
That describes my listening room exactly and I agree that this type of room can be difficult. The cathedral ceilings seem to reflect a lot of sound right back at my listening position in roughly the middle of the room. This tends to muddy up the sound and the imaging. The bass is also rather uneven, with large dips and valleys over the bass frequency range. I have had to add a lot of acoustic treatments around the room (bass traps, acoustic tiles, large sound-absorbent furniture, etc.), which does help a lot. Also I have had to work a lot on speaker and sub placement to minimize the bad effects. It's pretty good now but it took a lot of work to get there and it could still be better.
That describes my listening room exactly and I agree that this type of room can be difficult. The cathedral ceilings seem to reflect a lot of sound right back at my listening position in roughly the middle of the room. This tends to muddy up the sound and the imaging. The bass is also rather uneven, with large dips and valleys over the bass frequency range. I have had to add a lot of acoustic treatments around the room (bass traps, acoustic tiles, large sound-absorbent furniture, etc.), which does help a lot. Also I have had to work a lot on speaker and sub placement to minimize the bad effects. It's pretty good now but it took a lot of work to get there and it could still be better.