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I think you should move your speakers and your club chair to the second bedroom and use it soley for listening to music. You could listen in the nearfield, and the likelihood is that you would have more freedom for room treatment. A cube is far from ideal, but at least it's predictable, and you did say that you like that room more. Another benefit is a smaller room is generally cheaper to treat, and if it's your room, the treatments don't have to necessarily fit a strict decor. The small room wouldn't allow much space for treatments, but you could get some of Nathan's products (B-stock??) for the two way and three way corners. Add in a couple tapestries for the 1st reflection points and you'd have a sheik man room . It wouldn't be ideal, but it would be head and shoulders above your current situation. Just some food for thought.

I hear ya, and there's definitely a case to be made for going to town on the small room and getting the sound right, but I always wanted to use this stereo for entertaining as well as personal listening.  And you don't fully appreciate how small 9 x 9 x 9 is until you step into it.

I'm holding out hope that a couple of big area rugs, curtains, and maybe a wall treatment that I can cover with a tapestry or artwork will make major changes to the sound.  I'm not looking for perfection here, just significant improvement.  So with that in mind, would an acoustical panel on the wall space above the console table do much for me?  Anywhere else on my walls?

[JLM]

Nice room, but whoever designed the house surely didn't have an ear for architecture.

And to make it worse a mirror and large screen TV has been added to the first room.   

Sight unseen your 9 foot cube would introduce another hellish set of problems.  The "warmth" you're hearing in the cube is most probably one tone midbass.

I wouldn't invest much into audio equipment for either room.  I'd look for very small speakers that crossover to a sub at a relatively very high frequency, in order to provide as much bass control as possible (especially in the small room).  Normally most would advise against this as mid-bass is directional, so you'll hear where it's coming from.  But in either of these cases you need to be able to control (turn down) the bass/mid-bass to minimize problems.  I'd even start without the sub.  Here's one possibility for speakers:

http://www.tbisound.com/dsp_products_monitors_d1.asp

[slow_down]

Nice room, but whoever designed the house surely didn't have an ear for architecture.

It's an apartment.  And you'll have to go back in time to 1912 if you want to chew out the architect  

I'm not giving up on this room yet.  So, based on my pics, and assuming I get curtains and a couple large area rugs, does anyone see any walls that would benefit from a reasonably sized acoustical panel that I could mask with artwork or a tapestry?  Again, not looking for perfection, just measurable improvement.

Another thing I might try is placing the speakers on either side of the TV and seeing what that does for me.  I would think having the sofa and club chair along with a nice rug directly in front of the speakers would help, no?

[bpape]

By the TV can work potentially and offer some other options for treatments.  The issue is the entry to the room is right there so you can't spread them out or get them far from the front wall without being in the walkway.

Bryan

[slow_down]

The issue is the entry to the room is right there so you can't spread them out or get them far from the front wall without being in the walkway.

Bryan

I think it's do-able.  With the subwoofer out of the way there's a fair amount of wallspace, and I can always bring them out further for real listening and tuck them back the rest of the time.   Also, I can scoot my sofa back closer to the wall with the fireplace, which will give the left speaker more room to play with as well.  I'll try it tonight and post a pic of what it looks like.

[bpape]

Keep some distance behind your seating.  That's always a good thing to do both to get a nice enveloping feeling and to stay out of the boundary area where bass gets tubby.

Bryan

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OK, here are pics of the new speaker location.  Based on my short listening session, it's too early to tell, but I don't think it sounds any worse than over by the windows, and it certainly seems like this new location offers much more potential for unobtrusive treatment.

This shows the speakers tucked away right against the walls.  This is where I'll keep them when I'm not listening.  FYI, that's just a heavy wool blanket I've been meaning to take to the dry cleaners, standing in as an improvised rug - not sure if it's making a difference.



Here they are brought out into the room a little bit more.  I presume this improves the sound, but haven't really evaluated too much.  As you can see, I've got a fair amount of wiggle room to play with for each speaker.



Here's a side view of the same, to show how far out from the walls they are.



Here's one from the listener's perspective of that speaker location as well.  Before moving them to this location, I was worried that the sofa would block the left speaker somewhat, but that doesn't seem to be a problem.



And last here's a side view of the whole area to show my sitting position.  Here too there's a fair amount of wiggle room - I can move my chair from front to back pretty easily.



This is far, far better, right? 

[bpape]

In my opinion yes.  You have more room to play, more room beside the speakers, no windows to deal with, etc.

Also, if you treat the front right corner for bass control, you don't have to worry about symmetry as the doorway on the left front acts as a 'hole' for bass anyway.

Bryan

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Awesome!  Curious though, does this setup mean that I can essentially ignore the other part of the living room (the "sunroom" area with windows on two sides where the stereo used to be)?  If I could avoid putting curtains up on those windows, I could definitely live with putting up thick ugly ones on the window to the side of the new setup.