The good news is I can now stop spending money on components. In the last 10 years ive spent and lost a good 6-10K buying and selling stuff for a loss as well as lots of money in DIY supplies , drivers etc.

I guess though I had to go thru what I have gone thru to really appreciate where I stand in this audio hobby of mine. Its been fun but I believe this next 'phase' will be more fun.

Garland

Best Buy near me has a crappy Bose speaker system is set-up in a large open spaced area...by no means do they sound that good but they certainly dont sound bad. This summer I plan on dragging my Stage 4 Pis outside and hooking them up to my QSC 1850HD amp just to get an idea of what their true potential is.

Have you tried/how do you feel about renting a pro sound loudspeaker processor so you can use an RTA to find a placement with halfway smooth bass response. Then use the eq to find out if flat power response around the room makes up for your reverberant field issue. I realize normalizing the frequency domain behavior by itself does't address the real issue of reverb arrival and decay times, but it's your first clue to what is going on in there. It can help find standing waves too. In my case this "correction" fixed the problem to my satisfaction. I bought the processor because it was a powerful tool. I left it hooked up because it was better than anything I had ever done to my system. some may hate the idea, or even the reality of the result. It may not be for everyone, but I am happily done with it. A couple of sheets of fiberglass framed behind tapestry art and a blinky metal box did the trick quite well. Is the room really fixed, no, can I really tell, no! If however you are a fan of analog or hate the idea of even a digital eq, note that in my case the ability to see what was happening, allowed me to find a setup that is much better even without the processor(hence renting one first) and may work for you just that way. I thought I had tried it all untill I could see it happening. We put the speakers on dollys and rolled them around like a giant tone control, only we could move the mic and see the total power in the room, so not to create more problems than we fixed. I am far from acoustics expert, but I am starting to see first hand what all those JBL white papers about D.I. matching and flat power response in the coverage area are all about. As an aside, taking your speakers outside and RTA-ing them will leave no doubt that Wayne has a real handle on things too.

Thomas

It's like what I went through in the auto-slalom scene. Guys would spend thousands of dollars on in-take, exhaust, suspensions, etc to knock a few seconds off their time. I quickly realize that the best upgrade would be the driver behind the wheel. The few hundred dollars I spent on extra lessons gave me improvements I wouldn't get if I spent 10x that on the car. But still, guys and their shiny toys...

If we keep this up, pretty soon, we'll be suggesting something simple and sensible like switching off the forced air HVAC into the room during listening sessions to lower total noise floor.

Gar.

That tells you something right there.

Regards, russellc

Russellc

The 18' wall opposite and it's 7' return towards the wall you see will be covered with the stuff. I'll put pine 1x2 between the panels to break up the monotony. My good friend Larry from Hollywood Sound has had his listening room done like that for years. It will give me a live-end and a not-so-live-end (as opposed to a dead-end).
I've tried things like Sonex panels in the past but never sprang for things like room tunes or traps.
BTW, the toe-in I'm using is occasionally quite directional but mostly floats a soundstage from wall-to-wall on Analog, and only on Analog.