Last year I changed out carpeting for laminated wood floors in my living room, which is also my listening area. Now there is just one 6 x 10 area rug in the room. It's a pretty big room - 16 x 20 x 8. I immediately noticed the "high school gymnasium" effect with all the extra room reflections, and it put a pretty big damper on my listening habits for a year. Recently I upgraded from Paradigm Studio 60s to Monitor Audio GR60s, and apart from the fact that they are much better speakers, they seem to be a little less sensitive to the room acoustics. Maybe it's because the midrange and tweeter are mounted about 6" higher I'm not sure. With some tracks I barely notice it now. But many tracks are still a major downer.

As silly as it sounds, for those times when I'm sitting down for a couple of hours of serious listening, or watching a movie, I'd be willing to buy a couple of fat king size comforters and lay them out. Or I could possibly put in some vertical dampening by replacing my patio door blinds with cloth blinds, etc. But I don't want to invest in a $500 experiment on room acoustics and find out that it just makes things "different" and not "better".

Does anyone have some experience/recommendations for this situation? Many tanks.

I don't know much about the topics, but what about getting some acoustic panels (such as Gik), and placing them on the floor and other trouble spots when doing critical listening. If you're a do-it-yourselfer, you can make large panels that fold up for storage.

How is your room laid out and what else do you have in your room? I have a concrete floor in my media room, but it also has an area rug, an 11' long bookcase chock full of books, a suede couch, etc., all of which tame any existing acoustic problems. My room is also a good shape and does not have any echo effect even when empty.

If you can, describe your room, furnishings, and layout. Then we can try to suggest things to do such as moving your furniture around, adding more furniture, hanging a tapestry on the wall, adding another area rug or replacing the one you have with a larger one, removing any reflective surfaces such as a coffee table between you and your speakers, glassed-in art, etc.

You can send a diagram of your room and furniture to an acoustic company and they will often send you instructions on what to buy and where to place it. But acoustic treatments can quickly get expensive and I don't know of any money-back guarantee that they will solve your problem.

Don't forget plants! :D

Another nice idea is to actually have a floor seating area... you can get some big cushions and a little rug and all sit around on the floor on occasion. That'll dampen that area up.

Her's a trick I saw on DIY channel. Place a mirror in front of your speaker. Walk around the room looking at the mirror until you see yourself. This is a sound reflection area. Mark the spot and move the mirror to that spot. If it's a wall, place the mirror parallel with the wall or parallel with objects at that location. Walk around again until you see yourself. This is a reflection area for sound (bad). Often, sound bounces around, especially in a largish room such as yours. Also tilt the mirror to see where you're hitting the upper reaches.

In these bouncy spots, place a dampening device, whether it's a chair, a plant, bookcase, wall sound absorbing panel, or just about anything to stop or limit the sound from bouncing.

Try to angle/place the speakers to avoid these bouncy areas from overlapping your sitting area. A truly good theater will direct the sound from the speakers directly at the listeners as opposed to 'stereo' speakers which fire indirectly.

Isn't there a brand of rug people around here have recommended to help with reflections? I'm interested in the product too.

Her's a trick I saw on DIY channel. Place a mirror in front of your speaker. Walk around the room looking at the mirror until you see yourself. This is a sound reflection area. Mark the spot and move the mirror to that spot. If it's a wall, place the mirror parallel with the wall or parallel with objects at that location. Walk around again until you see yourself. This is a reflection area for sound (bad). Often, sound bounces around, especially in a largish room such as yours. Also tilt the mirror to see where you're hitting the upper reaches.

In these bouncy spots, place a dampening device, whether it's a chair, a plant, bookcase, wall sound absorbing panel, or just about anything to stop or limit the sound from bouncing.

Try to angle/place the speakers to avoid these bouncy areas from overlapping your sitting area. A truly good theater will direct the sound from the speakers directly at the listeners as opposed to 'stereo' speakers which fire indirectly.
Ummm... that's not *quite* how it works. What you want to do is sit in your regular listening position and have a helper move the mirror around the walls, floor and ceiling. Anywhere you can see a speaker (any speaker), in the mirror is a reflection point for that speaker and LP. If you acoustically treat those reflection points, you'll set up what's known as a "Reflection Free Zone".

You can read more about it here:
www.realtraps.com
http://www.realtraps.com/rfz.htm

Craig

Sorry I've been off line for a little. Thanks for some very good suggestions to get started. My room has several non-ideal characteristics, including the coffee table that a couple of you mentioned, and only one leather sofa and one sparsely covered chair in the room (and a couple of plants). Pretty much everything else is hard surfaces.

I think I'll begin by beefing up the area rug and then experiment with a couple of temporary things like a cover for the coffee table, maybe some vertical hangings or panels, and additional floor covers. If something starts to work, I'll try to figure out how to change it into something that would work as a permanent addition.