Out of curiosity, what are your test tracks that you've been using for all of this trial and error?
Pretty much every CD in the carousel (maybe 150 disks) -- room testing seems to need a wider range of tracks than speaker testing, at least if you're learning as you go like I am. I'm not using LPs much because the CDP's remote control and ability to replay sections over and over is really useful.
When I was trying to get the bass smoothed out I was using the first part of "Echoes" from Meddle and "On The Run" from DSOTM along with "Can-Utility and the Coastliners" from Foxtrot, but when I was playing with reflected higher notes I started with Metheny/Mehldau then settled on isolated vocal tracks, eg the opening bars of "Dancing with the Moonlit Night" from SEBTP. There's a bit of an edge on Peter Gabriel's vocals at the start of the song and that seems to hit all the right frequencies for adjusting reflections from the front wall window.
The pattern is basically "get it right, listen to a bunch of tracks, realize it's not right yet, tweak using the track that identified the problem, repeat ad nauseum" interspersed with periods of "forget about all that stuff and just enjoy the music".
One odd/neat thing is that I'm starting to get an overwhelming "yeah, that's what it's supposed to sound like" feeling as the room & speaker placement gets into "good enough" territory. It's been ~25 years since I've been able to sit back and just be aware of the music, not the system that provides it.
Have you considered removing the coffee table, at least temporarily?
Thanks for the reminder. I had tried removing the coffee table a couple of months back and it didn't make a lot of difference at the time (although it was covered with so much junk I guess it was pretty stealthy) but when I moved it over to the right hand wall tonight there was a small but noticeable difference.
I ended up moving the coffee table out of the listening area completely. I'm not sure it improved the imaging but it somehow made the sense of "ambience" seem less disturbed. On the downside, in a sense all that did is expose the next problem -- the overstuffed arms on the couch in the listening position.
Guess replacing the seating is next on the hit list, although the room is getting good enough that the position of my own arms is starting to make a noticeable difference
