Stuck in the near-field, or, Please help my small-but-complicated room!

Tweakers' Asylum

Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

Alright, settle in, this might take a couple paragraphs.
My living room is the only room I have to support my system. Unfortunately it is, acoustically, a riddle wrapped in an enigma.
First off, the dimensions: (roughly)12x14x8. I never know which number is supposed to come first, but anyway the stereo is arranged across one of the long walls. The reason for this is that the living room is the room you walk into when you enter the house. So, imagine this, here is my room: open the front door of the house and, bam, without any foyer or whatever, you're in the living room. The stereo is located against the opposite wall, with a window in the middle of the 12-ft wall to your left and one in the center of the 14 ft. wall behind the stereo, midway between the speakers. Can you picture this? Scintillating, I know. On the wall opposite the speakers, there's a large upholstered couch. I don't know what the fabric is. There's also a good-sized coffee table in roughly the center of the room.
A few more details before I get to the Big Problem. First, there's two paintings behind the speakers, roughly a foot or a little less above them. There's also a cheesy wall hanging behind the couch, and a formica-ish end table next to the couch. Realistically, by the way, there's only about 7 ft. between the speakers and the listening position. Now, here's the Big Problem: the living room opens into the rest of the house via a large archway. So one side of the room is boxed in with a window'd wall, the other wall is practically absent. Two windows, one door, large archway, small room, and, again, the stereo and the couch are set across the long walls. Is this clear so far?
The reason I've gone into such detail is because I had a series of questions and I figured this would be more useful than posting them as discontinuous questions without a frame of reference. Here are my questions (and thanks for having read this far):
1. I have an area rug but I'm getting a larger carpet. Is there anything I can put under the carpet as well to increase its absorbency?
2. Would something like RoomLenses help me out with the problem presented by the large archway?
3. The paintings behind the speakers are stretched canvas over large, open wooden frames. If it would help, I could stuff them with any sort of material, but would this help? And if so what kind of material should I use?
4. The coffee table has a piece of glass on it. Should I worry about this?
5. What else should I be thinking about/can I do?
My concerns are soundstage and clarity. I think I can do more for the clarity, but in a room this small, can I really improve the soundstage?
At present I have a crap stereo and am slowly building a real-life hi-fi get-up, so the untreated room I'm treating as one of my components and I want to work out a budget.
If anyone actually read this whole thing, and if anyone who actually read it responds, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, I deeply appreciate it.

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Kimber Kable

Topic - Stuck in the near-field, or, Please help my small-but-complicated room! - rhizomatic 07:31:15 03/03/03 (2)

Checkout Steve Deckert's articles - Tinnitus 17:42:19 03/04/03 (0)

Re: Stuck in the near-field, or, Please help my small-but-complicated room! - David Aiken 14:23:34 03/03/03 (0)

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