Widening Soundstage

Dude,

You and I are so lucky with our uniquely shaped rooms!

Mine is a 20X30 L shaped demon.

I found speakers I owned prior, like Maggies and B&Ws just could not synergize in this room for big soundstage and all the other fixings of good sound.

The Maggies in particular were imaging and soundstage champs in my prior home where the room they were in was perhaps a tad smaller but a more normal rectangular shape.

I found the only way to really get the most out of rooms like these are omni-directional design speakers. These tend to be champs in regards to presentling a large soundstage, even in assymetrically shaped rooms.

I owned OHMs also prior and ended up going that way. In fact, I ended up with 2 new pair for two different rooms. Y

ou might consider doing an in-home audition of a pair of OHM Walsh 100 or 200 series 3 in that room. YOu have to contact OHM to discuss your case (www.ohmspeakers.com). John Strohbeen, the owner, designer and an MIT trained engineer will probably help talk you through to a solution himself. They offer a very generous in-home audition period so there is no risk if they don't pan out.

There are other omni designs out there as well that might pan out that you could consider. OHM is the one I would recommend.

You might tweak a wider soundstage and better imaging with more air out of your system in that room by jumping through various hoops to get there, but seriously, I think omni's are the fast track way to go for your case.

With what you have, I agree with Shadorne. Your listening position might be too close to the speaks and things might open up better with more distance. Play with the position of the speaks relative to your listening spot carefully. A few inches could make a big difference.

Also that open door behind the system could be sucking some of the life out of the soundstage. Try to keep it closed.

You might try to do more acoustic dampening of the side and rear wall also to help with the near field listening, but it looks like that could be a major project.

Try the omnis. If they don't work, send them back or buy them used at a reasonable price and resell them.

The thing I have found with difficult rooms is you can either invest in treatments and go to great length to fight the room that you have to live and listen in or you can adapt the strategy of letting the room work for you rather than against you.

My conclusion from having used both omnis, planars and conventional box designs in various shapes and sizes of rooms over the years is that omnis will fill the room with sound more evenly and with greater ease for you in assymetrical rooms than more directional designs.

Thats not to say that placement doesn't matter with omnis because it does, but omnis just tend to work with the room more naturally than do more directional designs.

The OHms are acatually not completely omni, the top is covered by a more conventional wide dispersion soft dome tweeter angled inwards 45 degrees, which helps retain the naturally wide soundstage of the omni Walsh driver that covers the rest.

The soundstage almost always naturally extends completely to the side walls both left and right even if the speakers are placed more closely together and located either significantly right or left of center.

Toeing the OHMs outward to point the tweeter more directly towards the listening position can be used to reduce the width of the natural wide soundstage if needed. When properly set up a couple or few feet from the rear wall, the sound stage will also typically extend back well beyond the rear wall on good recordings.

Gallo Ref 3.1's would be a very good possibility in that room as well.

I just think that you are going to always have a problem with designs that fire mostly forward (or forward and backward) in that room, no matter how good they are otherwise. You need something that fires out more laterally as well to truly address your issue. The Gallos fit that bill.

Yes, I saw the staircase as perhaps the biggest issue.

If all else fails, I still think you should consider trying omnis in that room in particular.

Yes, I saw the staircase as perhaps the biggest issue.

If all else fails, I still think you should consider trying omnis in that room in particular.

I have not heard them, but the new Pennys from Blue Circle might be worth considering. They use an OHM omni Walsh driver and conventional dynamic drivers for the low end. They appear to be fairly small and compact and are designed to go up close to the rear wall. These might work well in particular in that room due to 1) the omni design and 2) the ability to go up against the rear wall for listening at a greater distance when quarters are tight.

They were supposedly debuted at last years Rocky Mountain Audio Fest I read. I'm wondering if anybody heard them there?

Just a thought and something completely different....

Have you tried moving them closer together, maybe 18 inches or so each and with no toe in?

Sometimes really good speakers like these will surprisingly cast a wider soundstage when closer together relative to your listening position than when farther apart, depending on room acoustics.

My Dynaudio monitors will cast a soundstage from wall to wall, about 12 feet wide, when only 4 feet or so apart and 3 feet or so out from the rear wall in a 12X12 room with my listening position on a couch along the rear wall.

Another radical yet inexpensive idea would be to try a Carver Sonic Holography device with the speakers also located similarly close together.

I owned on for years and despite the fact that some here will ridicule it, it does in fact work as advertised to create a wider, deeper and more holographic soundstage in places where it otherwise might not happen.

It looks pretty good to me as best I can tell from the pics.

Does it sound better now?