Hey Micah, you seem to be willing to go to extraordinary measures to get your surround sound dialed in so I have a suggestion based on my experience in my apartment. If you can, set up total blackout in your room. I’m not talking about dark I’m talking black (i. e. no light sources other than the screen and no (minimize) reflective surfaces.
My apartment had all light sources blocked out and black curtains 360 degrees around the room. Not only did this make the screen appear to hang in open space it also had an unexpected effect on the sound. It deadened the room a little, but not much. The interesting thing is that it took the echo out of the room effectively removing the walls from giving distance queues.
For example with the curtains open (walls exposed) the scene in were the bucket falls down the well in Balin’s Tomb it sound great but somehow confined. With the curtains closed the sound is more cavernous.
At the beginning of “Appleseed” were shattered glass and concrete are flying all around it sounded nice and enveloping with the curtains open. However, with the curtains closed I got not only the envelopment but more depth. I could here discrete pieces of glass/concrete/shell casings hitting from right next to me all the way out into the distance. Much better effect than Audyssey.
It’s actually quite disorienting. Even with the room blacked out but curtains open I could “hear” my position in the room relative to the walls just by the noised made by moving. With the curtains closed the audio queues that would normally indicate my distance to a wall weren’t there. If nothing was making noise it was like being in an endless void.
One drawback I found with total blackout was that the darker I got the room the more annoying even the smallest amount of light became. Got to the point during some movies/games I pulled a black sheet over my legs because they were just to distracting. I’m looking to buy something along the lines of a black ninja suit for the house.
The other thing I found was that having the curtains closed took the airiness out of some music but that was easily remedied by opening some or all of the curtains.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I found total blackout enhanced both the video and surprisingly to me the audio more than anything since upgrading from TV + boom box (first surround system) to Axioms, allowing near total suspension of disbelief. It was way better than moving from 5.1 to 7.1.
Cheers,
Dean