Hi all,

I recently moved to a new house which only has a small room left to make a HT.
I decided to go for it anyway as I can't live without my HT ;)

So I installed the Barco, painted the room, put in some nice, plush carpetting and hooked everything up. Boy was I disappointed!!
It's like this room is the twilight zone of audio!! Nice enough sound when I'm standing in the back corner of the room, but a tin can when I stand or sit where I'm supposed to be sitting...
And no, I won't move my couch to the corner of the room :p

I have a B&W N803 frontstage, but this room has the ability to suck all the life out of these otherwise great speakers :(
I know how this set sounds from my previous place and it's a real shame to hear how bad this room makes them sound.

I've been reading up on acoustics from then on, but if someone could help me out, I would be very grateful as the topic is so elaborate and I don't have the time to figure everything out.

I have included a pic of the setup as it is now.
The 18" sub I made is way too much for this room (I know, but it was initially meant for another house) but I'm not using it right now. I have tried it and sure enough, by it's sheer power maybe it is able to overcome some of the room issues, but I feel like I am just masking the true problem.

The true problem being that the N803's, when set to fullrange and no sub (so no x-over/cutoff applied), do not sound anything like they did before especially in the bass-department even though they should be able to extend to 35Hz +-3dB. On the other hand midbass is exaggerated at the seating position and the inverse is true in the corners.

I went out to buy a bunch of rockwool panels (Rockfit 434, 70kg/m³, 6cm thickness (2.4")) and provisionally put them against the walls and window, but they did absolutely nothing for the problem. It had been my intention to space them from the walls to allow them to be more absorbant down low, but I'm now wondering if that will do me any good at all.

I suppose this is a matter of phase-variance that creates a null in the center of the room, but I have no way of determening this as I have no measuring equipment.
My receiver is an ageing Denon 3801 and it has never heard of Audyssey ;)
I don't think my onboard soundcard qualifies as a valid option for REW either...

http://server3.uploadit.org/files/DisTreSs-HT1.4.jpg (http://www.uploadit.org)

Can you move your speakers and/or sub? Can you buy/test multiple subs? Here's a freeware program that takes a room response, although you do have to buy a microphone:

Holm Impulse (http://www.holmacoustics.com/holmimpulse.php)

If you can't move speakers or subs around, I'm not sure what to say.

Try moving the L/R mains into the room. Having speakers right in the corners is usually never a good thing.
By the measurements you show, it looks like the front of the seating is close to being 38% of the room length from the front wall. That's generally the preferred distance to where seat (your ears when seated) needs to be, from either the front or back walls.
So you might try moving the seat slightly forward or back to get that 38%

I take it you have no treatments in the room? Start with corner bass traps and some DIY panels for the first reflection points.

Can you move your speakers and/or sub? Can you buy/test multiple subs? Here's a freeware program that takes a room response, although you do have to buy a microphone:

Holm Impulse (http://www.holmacoustics.com/holmimpulse.php)

If you can't move speakers or subs around, I'm not sure what to say.


The speakers can only move forward/backward in a range of about 1 meter (39") because of the fact that there is a door on the right hand side of the room. They can't be positioned more towards the center of the room either since otherwise they would block my screen...
The only things I can play with is the backward/forward movement and the toe-in of the speakers. However I've moved them around so much now that I've reached the peak of my frustration as all the moving did next to nothing to improve the sound.

The sub is not in use right now as I've already said because I want to be able to get good musical reproduction without the sub and courtesy of my very nice fullrange speakers. The only other place I would be able to move the sub would be along the back wall ending up in the opposite corner but that's it...

Try moving the L/R mains into the room. Having speakers right in the corners is usually never a good thing.
By the measurements you show, it looks like the front of the seating is close to being 38% of the room length from the front wall. That's generally the preferred distance to where seat (your ears when seated) needs to be, from either the front or back walls.
So you might try moving the seat slightly forward or back to get that 38%

I moved it back a bit more and it made the biggest improvement so far... and even then the change is still not nearly enough.
I'm getting an even better improvement moving the couch right up against the back wall, but that's not where I want it to be...

I take it you have no treatments in the room? Start with corner bass traps and some DIY panels for the first reflection points.

As stated in my original post:
"I went out to buy a bunch of rockwool panels (Rockfit 434, 70kg/m³, 6cm thickness (2.4")) and provisionally put them against the walls and window, but they did absolutely nothing for the problem. It had been my intention to space them from the walls to allow them to be more absorbant down low, but I'm now wondering if that will do me any good at all."

I would be willing to make basstraps but will only be able to do so for the back corners. I will not be able to do something like this for the corners next to my front speakers as they would limit the screensize too much.
Could/would basstraps make such a significant difference in this type of room?

I'm just wondering (despairing would be more suitable actually) if I have not hit the physical constraints of this tiny room and will therefore not be able to change the room mode to an acceptable enough level. :(