My humble system sounded pretty good in my old place. Now ive moved to a much bigger living room with carpet instead of hardwoods, and the whole system sounds like crap. I've made a pic of the floorplan of my place which you can view here:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3004/3401579655_53244a6175_o.png

i have a panasonic xr25 receiver hooked up to two JBL E80 floorstanders and a velodyne F1000 subwoofer. The speakers are arranged at either end of the diagonal wall segment at the upper left of the floorplan.

At first i thought it was just because of the carpeting, but now i'm starting to wonder if it's because of the 45 degree angles next to the speaker. would it help to put a tapestry behind them to tame some of the weird reflections?

if anybody has any suggestions i would be very grateful. comments like "speakers never sound good with wall to wall carpeting" are also welcome, as I'm just trying to figure out if there's anything I can do to make this better.

another thing ive noticed is that if my ears are at the level of the speakers the sound is significantly better than if i'm standing up, again, something that was never the case in my old room.

thanks everybody!

What was the shape of the old room?

That's a funky shape to the new room.

Usually carpet absorbs reflections and properly non parallel walls can help reduce room modes. Both these things are good.

You never say which particular aspect of your sound got worse, ie does it now have lack of bass, added broadband distortion etc.?

ive noticed is that if my ears are at the level of the speakers the sound is significantly better than if i'm standing up, again, something that was never the case in my old room.

Normally speakers should sound their best with the speakers being at ear height and not as good or clear when standing above them. It sounds like to me that you liked the ambient noise of your previous room that was smaller and had wood floors which is reverb central. Possibly you thought the sound was too bright when you sat down at your last place and standing took your ears out of the line of fire of the tweeters evening the sound out a little. I'm only guessing. I'm just trying to put it together from the info you gave. Smaller, echoic room = overly lively sound for sure and a larger, carpeted room should = duller but way more accurate sound. If you're missing bass whether it be mid or low bass or both, every room has an optimal speaker and subwoofer placement that you must find through placement experimentation. The bottom line is that your new room is way better for sound quality than your old one was. A more acoustically accurate room could be revealing more of what your speakers actually sound like and/or your placement is not good.

I feel your pain man. I hate moving to a new place. I dread it. It takes me a few months to work every major kink out and is almost an ongoing process of working out the small ones that I discover for about a year. Then I'm all set and happy and then I move.:(

Mr audio, you are exactly right about everything. my smaller room was reverb central, and standing sounded better because when i was sitting i was getting pummeled by the tweeters. but there wasn't THAT much of a difference, in my new room everything changes. When I stand up the upper midrange and treble become muddled and the differentiation between instruments is vague.

the bass is not as lively but slightly tighter and i'm satisfied with it.

as for the room modes, is it optimal to place the speakers on the off-axis as I am doing, or should they project traditionally in to the room? Thanks for the replies!