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You must define the problem to have any hope in solving it. Non-symmetrical rooms have acoustic advantages but being "non-standard" there aren't cook book recipes available. Recommend you read Floyd E. Toole's "Sound Reproduction" as a wonderful primer for how speakers work in rooms. In it Toole teaches that EQ is of little use. And except for the sloped ceiling doesn't seem much different from your room. To really learn your room would require a microphone and test tones. But IMO the best room is one dedicated to use as you wish (a man cave). For A/V that means enjoying what you want, when you want, and at the volume you want. All else is secondary.
I have no experience with this http://www.spatialcomputer.com/page9/page10/page10.html but something to look into. One option is just get the room treatments and once the better half hears the difference she'll understand why you had to put your foot down and disobey direct orders. And/or put them up for listening sessions and then put them away. It's like a kid putting his toys away when he's done playing. My experience was the corners and back wall with bass traps made a huge difference. The first reflection points not as much. I'm pretty sure the experts are going to say the heavy drapes are no the way to go and may dull the highs and not clean them up.
Rob, our rooms are very different ceiling-wise (mine's at 7'8" and flat throughout), but my right side's first reflection point is window glass. The left side's is painted drywall up to 40" above the floor, then a large opening (think "huge pass-through") above that into the kitchen. At that left reflection point there's a lowboy bookcase that reaches up to just about 4" below the opening into the kitchen. The books are varied in height, width, and depth. Here's a graphic look at that section of the room (the boxes labeled "SE-3" are the floorstanding speakers):In order to get effective first-reflection point control I had to place floorstanding 2'W x 4'H x 4"D (5.25" total depth) acoustic panels (GIK 244's in this instance, denoted by the black-bordered burgundy rectangles) in front of the both the window and the bookcase. I had tried three-foot-high cylindrical traps at those locations previously, but it became obvious in listening comparisons that in my situation, at least, trapping to at least four feet above the floor was essential in front of the window. The depth of the trap in that location (and the audible "cleanup" it provided in that area) suggests to me that if curtains are your only esthetic option, then "thick" is what you need there for as-close-to-optimum control as you can achieve. I'd note, however, that the panel trap in that location is light enough to be picked up and moved out of the room when I'm not listening "seriously" (though I haven't had to resort to that yet--the sonic improvement my better half heard with it in place was sufficient to persuade her that it should stay there).The same height consideration applies on the left part-wall-part-opening side. With the four-foot-tall panel trap in place, there was immediately discernible improvement in soundstage presentation, image localization, rendering of detail, and reduction or elimination of glare over what could be heard with either the filled bookcase in place by itself (which I'd rank "good") or the three-foot-high cylindrical trap in front of it ("better"). I suspect that the increased width of coverage afforded by the panel versus the cylindrical trap is also a factor in the perceived improvement.Since rooms vary so much, I offer this simply as descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive). And I'd second the suggestion to consider art-printed traps as a possible workaround.Jim
I really don't have the experience to tell you exactly what the problem is. I can tell you the first reflection on one side is glass and the other stretches into the kitchen about 20 ft. There's also a huge peak that goes from 8ft to about 18ft and it's not symmetrical from speaker position; meaning the right side, the ceiling is 8ft and the left it's 18ft (if that makes any sense) It just sounds out of control with the bass and the highs seem a bit harsh. I find myself turning it up to higher levels for casual listening to overcome some of these deficiencies. There's kind of a problem with panels because of the windows. I was thinking of getting some with hooks and hanging them while listening, or maybe some with stands. However, I THINK curtains would help a bit, but maybe I'm wrong.
