The video that Danny posted today about the importance of room treatments was very informative and bang-on with respect to his sage advice about the importance of acoustical treatments for the room.
I live in a small home, and as such, have a small space for listening to my system. When listening, I sit in a "quasi-nearfield" setup, 7' in front of the speakers with the speakers placed 6.5' apart (center-to-center), so it's almost an equilateral triangle. I have GIK Acoustics panels along the front wall, at the corners of the front and side walls and at the 1st reflection points, as well.
Here's a pic of some of the acoustical treatment set-up when I had my Harbeths in the system. The Harbeths are also placed 3' from the rear baffles to the front wall, measured with a laser tape measure.
Most of the panels you see here are 4" GIK Alpha 4A panels with fiberglass damping material along the front wall, and a GIK Impressions foam panel behind the main rack. As I'm limited with clearance between the audio rack and the half-wall it's mounted on, I'm using a 2" GIK Impressions foam panel instead of a 4" Alpha 4A panel, which you can see behind the Lumin P1 and Michell turntable.
The platform the speakers rest on are regular plywood boards which I measured with the iPhone app, Seismograph, as providing the best performance for damping vibration imparted by the speakers & stands to the floor compared to MDF and ceramic floor tiles (the worst were the ceramic floor tiles, which ring like a bell). I just painted them black to match the carpet. The Harbeths rest on EVPs from Norm Varney at A/V Roomservice (which are the best vibration damping pads I've ever used, BTW) to damp vibrations from the speaker cabinet being imparted to the maple Resonant Woods speaker stands.
Not shown in this photo is I also have GIK 2" Impressions panels at the 1st reflection points on the side walls between the speakers and my listening position and four foam 2'X 2' 13-root quadratic diffusers at the 1st reflection point on the ceiling (not shown in the photo). The windows in the room have wooden slat blinds that I set to an angle so they also provide some level of diffusion from the window panes. The carpet on the room floor is wool, and covers the listening area and there's a large leather couch off to the left side of the room with pillows to provide some additional acoustical absorption. There's also 4' tall GIK fiberglass bass trap on the left corner back wall (the wall behind my sitting position). I had more of these at one point, but they over-damped the room, and I found using just one bass trap sounded the best.
Hope the gang finds this setup photo useful. Cheers.
