I find in my main room it's sound-staging or tone--I can get the best of one or the other, have never been able to maximize or optimize both entirely. I've found a good balance in between.

In your shoes I would try "toe-ing" out the speakers a bit. I have mine actually with no toe-in or toe-out which works best for me, though it does diminish sound-staging. I choose tone over sound-stage.

The ZROCK2 will help a LOT. I think you'll be very pleased when you have that in the system.

I've had Omega S3HOXRS and now the Omega Custom Vintage HO (dual 8" drivers).  The amp is the UFO25 and with the S3HOXRS I had the ZROCK2 but with the Vintage HO and a step up in the source I no longer needed it and the results were better without it, even the bottom end!

You're dealing with more than one limiting factor.  I'll focus this on my experience with the Omega combinations more so than the room as my experience has been with an untreated room.  In the new house it will be treated, for sure!

I think that the ZRock will make a difference with single driver Omega speakers or small dual driver Omega speakers and may be all you will need, unless you begin to hooked on the transparency of the system and begin to explore the possibilities, which is what happened to me.

The Omegas are very transparent as is the UFO probably more than you realize at this time.  What you are hearing is a combination of the room and the system faithfully revealing the limitations.  Once you get the ZRock, try some room treatment.  Even a little can make a huge difference.  If that is not the direction that you end up going in then you'll be looking at a step up in the source and/or speakers, or a step up in the source and a fast sub.

That's what I did and the results have been beyond expectations so much so that I'm looking at another source step up and open baffles with 2 15" drivers each.

I would suggest that you do some room treatment and the ZRock.  May be all that you need and be happy with.

For improving the room barring much treatment, I too find speaker placement really matters. Like Lon's positioning suggestion, seems important to find speaker placement that reduces frequencies building up or cancelling, while also allowing a more complete soundstage. As James suggests, your description of the bassier areas in your room are likely this, either cancellation or build up depending on how certain very long wave bass frequencies overlap. Also, lots of rooms build up bass in boundary areas.

Anyway, I threw out conventions also in my long and lean room, the speakers in the center area of the long wall and ±5 feet apart tweeter to tweeter, and ±9 feet tweeter to my ears. Not a classical setup, my speakers also are actually toed out maybe a 1/4".... I have some room treatment, and my room was made well for natural diffusion and bass absorption being irregular adobes with plaster... no surface of the walls flat and plumb. Also the whole ceiling seems to be a sort of inadvertent diaphragmatic absorber with overlapping layers of tar paper above the rough boards that have gaps between, and on top of that 12" of fiberglass, then a fairly tight airspace. This is not a very-low bass absorber I am guessing though, as I still need to attenuate low bass in this room and system. Also, my diffusion is not calculated, but really good when all is right.

Bringing me back an idea of trying to set things up in a room as well as possible without a lot of careful treatment. A theory is to make the driver's reflective bounces off walls, floor and ceiling more complex, hopefully causing them to overlap less and limiting cancelation or build up of frequencies. This can help with a more complete frequency range while slowing the reflection's time as they get back to our ears, hopefully reducing smearing and mitigating the direct signal from the driver getting confused by reflected frequencies. As an example, I don't remember it well, but Steve has a drawing somewhere in his white papers (I think it was there?) where he positioned speakers relative to a corner rather than a flat wall. Still out from the walls, but in this arrangement the projection of the sound from the drivers hits angled walls to start, and then continues with lots of other reflections bouncing off also angled walls, the complexity reducing reflective sound overlap (hopefully) and helping those reflected frequencies get to our ear a little more slowly.

Don't know your room size or options, but hope this vague outline is useful. But more-or-less as is, aside from playing with toe as Lon suggests, it could be good to try angling the speakers back a bit too, making reflections more complex.

In this system/room, as setup, the balances are really good in every way, and the sound stage is deep, wide, and articulate/saturated.
     

Brian, placing fiberglass insulation rolls in corners as bass traps struck me as creative and economical.  Do you know anyone that has tried that?

Hello, Tony.
I have not been able to remember if any one other than Randy tried that form of trap.
The low cost is what made them appealing to me. But I do not have a high fidelity system, so I have not tried them.

Brian

So much good info in this thread! I could talk for days about diffusers and absorbers.

Here is a great visual example I like to use to help people wrap their heads around what's going on and how to solve it. I did a Google image search for "salt sound experiment" - lets see if I can add it to this thread.



I posted videos of this here a few years ago.
So this is a steel plate that is physically connected to a driver of some sort, a tone run through it, and salt or sand poured on it. So the steel plate can represent your listening room, and the salt patterns are a physical representation of the sound waves in your room crashing into each other and causing peaks and nulls. Each frequency draws different patterns because each frequency has different lengths. ie a 40hz bass note is much longer than a 200hz bass note, so they crash into each other (after bouncing off walls, floor, ceiling) in different locations...which is represented by the salt pooling up in different locations at different frequencies. This is super apparent with bass because the waves are so big that you can stand in one spot and it's like the center of a tornado, step 3 feet away and your sinuses are rattling!

This happens at ALL FREQUENCIES! At higher frequencies this is called comb filtering because when you look at at a measurement graph of your room, your otherwise flat speakers have these notches at regular intervals.



So how does this visual representation help us understand how to address the problem? Well, look at those salt patterns, and imagine your listening position in one of those black (dead) spots. You're picturing a tiny little chair on that steel plate now right? So what happens if you physically move your chair? Hot damn, you can be in that salty goodness! I mean, you can be in a bass happy zone. Or, alternatively you can move your speakers, which moves the salt pattern, till the bass happy zone now covers your little chair! But...how far do I need to move my speakers? Can I just toe them in? Do I move Forward, or backward, or wider? (shrug) Way too many variables for any guidance. There are some room tuning programs that pro sound engineers use that can map out a room in 3d and help, but that's all very specialized stuff. There are also some really basic 2d calculators that can help, but IMHO without good measurement gear and LOTS of time, your best bet is to use the measurement devices on the sides of your head!

But, but, but Mr Raven Sir...I have adjusted everything as best as I can, and the bass is way better...but I can clearly spot a few bass notes that are just dead, dead, dead!

Yes, unless your listening room is in an empty field (no boundaries to cause reflections and crashes) or your living room is the size of a basketball court (waves are weakened by the time they reflect and crash due to distance), well then us mere mortals who have typical listening rooms will just have nulls and peaks!

That's where the room treatment comes in! Diffusers help break up those reflections and time delay the reflected sound to reduce comb filtering...but diffusers for bass frequencies would need to be a MINIMUM of 12" to even get to 150hz or so. They would really need to be a few feet deep to really get down to the good stuff, and that's just not possible in our living spaces. So what we do is add large amounts of absorption to sort of fake having that basketball court sized listening room. We're trying to suck up those big bass notes as they are crashing into the walls so the bass waves are weakened by the time they crash in your listening position, causing less of a peak or null and making the bass more even.

Unfortunately this too can take up a lot of space in your room. You just can't cheat physics - it's all about trade-offs.  

A couple notes about adding fiberglass and other absorbing materials:

Many people say it's not good to have exposed fiberglass that you could be breathing in particles every listening session. I don't think this is as bad as people say (unless your rocking out and punching the fiberglass to disturb it).

Too much absorption can kill the liveliness of your room because it's sucking up all frequencies. That's part of why Randy's bag of fiberglass worked so well; the plastic wrapping reflected most frequencies, while the bass notes pass through the plastic and still get absorbed by the fiberglass.

If you are concerned about having fiberglass or mineral wool in your listening room, they do make acoustic insulation made from recycled denim. Super safe, and works pretty well...just a bit expensive compared to the pink stuff or mineral wool. I'm very partial to mineral wool myself - there is a reason more expensive housing uses it in the walls between rooms...because it soaks up sound so well for its thickness!

Nice post Raven. Thanks.

I know you said in your OP that you wished for a solution without adding a subwoofer but...I strongly recommend reconsidering.

I fully agree that traps are great for augmenting bass sq in-room, but may not specifically fix your problem at your listening position.

I also agree that even the slightest change in speaker positioning might fix this problem at your listening position, but this will likely come at the expense of a decrease in staging and imaging.

The benefits of a sub are that you can place it anywhere in a room, and you can adjust the phase, volume, and crossover frequency, allowing you to repair room modes easily with the added benefit of an overall increase in fidelity and sq. And, this adjustability allows for future changes in your system and room at any time without additional expense.

For me, all three are important and truly helped me dial in my sound. My preferred priority of fixes in my room was: 1- Speaker position, 2- Subs, then 3- Room Treatment. Certainly, your mileage may vary.