Paul, do you fully understand what VRM is doing? Because some of what it is doing is simulating the listening environment. This includes the reflection simulation for the room. What's another word for that? "REVERB"!

When you try out different 'speakers' in the VRM and some of them sound like there's too much reverb, it's because the simulation of the speaker also includes it's mid-high frequency dispersion pattern, which will interact with the virtual room. Some of the speaker models will have a wider dispersion pattern than others, which will end up with more reflections from the side walls and ceiling in some of the room simulations, than other speaker models.

The other thing that the VRM is doing over headphones, by virtue of dispersion pattern, is simulating L/R cross-mixing that you get from speakers. So, disabling the VRM absolutely will sound 'more direct'.

The comments from the EM article about speaker placement in the room and near walls are important and really shouldn't be ignored, whether or not you think your system sounds great where it is. It's all about coupling into the physics of room acoustics - and you have some issue with mixing in the corner.

The issue of the height being different for the two hi-fi speakers is easily solved mechanically to raise the left to match the right - which looks like it's probably more on-plane with your ear height than is the left speaker. Looks like you have the left one on a stand. Put something under the stand that equals the current height difference - problem solved.

You might have them toed in too much. With Hi-fi speakers, with a wider dispersion typically than nearfields - setting the toe in less steep is recommended compared to nearfields.

I would say that you are currently just a few mechanical tweaks from something that is just as good, if not better, than a budget monitor solution.

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