[nick72]

Hi everyone!

I live in an "open concept" style condo where the living room and dining area have no wall between them, and that also opens up to the kitchen as well. It all adds up to ~3800 cu ft of area.

Obviously, I enjoy listening to music and watching movies in the living room, but since I moved in, I've been frustrated by the acoustics of the room. Detail is simply not there and bass is also lacking (noticed in music mostly)...especially in the mid/upper-bass.

I changed my front speakers to the admirably rated Ascend Acoustics CBM-170's with a CMT-340 center, expecting a huge improvement from my previous Klipsch Quintets, but noticed, for the most part, improved dynamics. Not much improvement, if any in mid/upper-bass and in detail.
I continue to use a Klipsch KSW-10 subwoofer, and was considering replacing that too, but with the lack of much change when replacing the fronts, I'm not so sure that will help much anymore.

After some investigation, I figured out that the issue is likely primarily the fault of the room itself.

I played around with RoomEQ Wizard, which has helped me with the bass to some extent, but the response is pretty uneven, especially between 100 and 200 Hz that I can't do anything about (not without room treatment anyway).

I tried the famous "clap" test, which returned significant echo (ringing?).

So I looked into familiarizing myself on how to treat a room and into some room treatment options on the Net...

This undertaking left me quite disheartened.

While room treatment would work great in a "downstairs" room or music studio (both of which I don't have), in a living room it does not seem realistic to try this as it would significantly impact the aesthetics of the room. Some corners can't even be treated anyway (closet, etc...).

Being concerned with aesthetics, I was wondering if there is really anything that could be done to my living room to tame it? Is it hopeless? Do I have to just live with it?

If it's of any help, here a rough drawing of my problem room along with some outputs from RoomEQ Wizard 4.0 that might be helpful (I hope)...

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks