Forced by circumstances to point the loudspeakers in Music Room Two into the short 12 foot dimension of the room, as opposed to the longer dimension, is proving to be a challenge in terms of getting any kind of soundstage depth and focus. It means the listening position is right up against the rear wall in order to allow the loudspeakers to be away from their rear wall. A compromise to be sure.
Add to that the challenge of maintaining a properly sized center image, good tonal balance for all the instruments, and you have an interesting setup dilemma in this room - one I suspect many of you might have as well.
When you're faced with such a situation most rooms are going to require some sort of room tuning; in my case, it means a set of three RPG diffusers centered along the wall directly behind the loudspeaker pair. These diffusers set the image back beyond the physical wall and when the lights are dimmed, give a sense of depth that doesn't match the space between the back of the loudspeakers and the rear wall - it becomes much greater - and sounds much more natural and like the IRS in Music Room One.
One does not have to use RPG brand of diffusers, I just happen to have this set left over from Music Room One. However, this type of wall mounted tall wooden diffuser happens to be ideal and is much better than any round traps I have encountered for narrow small rooms.
Once these diffusers were put in place, I was able to pull the speakers a littler bit further into the room so that now they are a now about 52 inches from the front of the Thiel's baffle to the rear wall, toed in about 4 inches, and separated about 8 feet from tweeter to tweeter.
The result is quite satisfying, although thin in the bass. So, toalleviatethe thinness I can move the speakers closer together or closer to the rear wall - but unfortunately that's not in the cards if I want to maintain a proper soundstage. What to do?
It's late tonight and I'll work on this again tomorrow.
