It seems I inadvertently gave the wrong impression! This is not a booming racquetball court. There are many plants, books, dog and cat beds, etc. In fact, when these rooms were recently emptied for hardwood floor refinishing, I was struck by all the echoes and the great increase in loudness. These are simply rooms that, due to lack of carpeting and drapes, are relatively bright.
Rugs are not an option: companion animal illnesses lead to frequent accidents. Drapes are a possibility, but not my preference.
I have an old Mirage OM-1 speaker in one of the rooms which sounds quite nice (unfortunately the woofer surround on the other one rotted away), so it's possible to have good sound in here. I'm just wondering if "bright" spaces like this would get along with "bright" speakers.
More generally, I'd love to hear Alan's or Ian's thoughts on how room characteristics might reasonably affect speaker choice. The room—the "forgotten component"—clearly affects the perceived sound significantly. And many rooms simply don't conform to the "average" room used in loudspeaker tests. So it seems useful to ask how, if at all, one might want to adjust speaker choices to one's real-world environment.
On the other hand, Ian's posts seem to suggest that the differences between Axiom's "bright" and not so "bright" speakers are fairly subtle. So perhaps none of this matters much except to confirmed audiophiles.
Thanks again for any thoughts.
