Cost no Object but Small Room

Hi Henry,

I am biased as I manufacture speakers and electronics but I can still offer you good advice!
Here are a few general points.
(1)
Near field listening in smaller rooms requires a very coherent sound reproduction. Usually two way will be better than three way, less drivers rather than more.
(2)
A full "ranger" used with one or two subs with an active crossover relieves the full range driver of all the X-max consumming hard work. Forget any speaker system where you add on a subwoofer and leave the "main speaker" still working hard in the bass.
(3)
Room correction has a more noticable benefit in smaller rooms and can integrate subs very effectivly.
(4) If you can pull the speakers out from the wall by about 3 feet Open Baffle has a big advantage over box designs in small rooms as OB only generate 50% as much "un-wanted " energy as box designs. You still get all the direct radiated sound and slam and dynamics, but the neighbours dont hear it!
(5) Some amazing results can be obtained with DIY designs if you have access to skilled craftsmen to do the assembly and finishing work. This is more a custom design project but if you plan to stay in the house a while you can justify some serious brickwork!
(6)Is it only your decision or are other family members having a say?
(7) What type of music and what volumes do you generally like?
(8)What is the construction of the room.
(9)Mains power ; I can recomend a dedicated distribution box (6 or 8 way) with seperate magnetic circuit breakers for each line. This allows you to run a heavy duty (ideally made up of multiple 1mm guage each in seperate teflon dielectric) solid core silver power cord from the power meter box as it enters your home directly to your listening room. The box should have heavy duty brass buss bar clamps that bolt down onto the ends of your equipment power cords and this eliminates the whole mains plug / wall socket interface. Try this before investing in big buck power conditioners.

Good luck and check out overkillaudio.com for a few more ideas!

All the best

Derek Wilson
Overkill Audio.

I have a small room too and recently contacted John DeVore at DeVore Fidelity about his line of speakers, particularly the Silverbacks. He claims that they would work well in rooms about the size of yours. Don't know if you have any dealers in HK, but lots of folks rave about these speakers and I hope to check them out in the not too distant future.

Any thoughts on using MBL's in this situation?

Omnis, dipoles, bipoles, and polydirectional speakers work best when they can be set up such that the onset of side-wall and rear-wall reflections reaches the listener's ears at least 10 milliseconds after the first-arrival sound. The 10 milliseconds isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but a fuzzy rule-of-thumb based on psychoacoustics. Actually this applies to all speakers, but is more likely to be a concern with omnis, dipoles, bipoles, and polys. The 10 milliseconds corresponds to a path length of about 11 feet, so in other words you'd want the early reflection paths to be at least 11 feet longer than the direct path from the drivers to your ears (including the reflection off the wall behind the listener, if possible). This is usually not practical in a small room.

In my opinion a small room calls for speakers with a well-controlled radiation pattern and/or smooth power response, as inevitably the bulk of the reverberant energy will arrive earlier than in a larger room. Too much of a spectral discrepancy between direct and reverberant energy can give rise to listening fatigue in any room, but especially in a small one.

I'm presently working on a design intended to perform well in a small room, but I'm shooting for a much lower price point. Nevertheless, the above principles of acoustics and psychoacoustics are applicable even to speakers with exotic drivers.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

Here's another way to go. Get a dedicated headphone amp,and the best earphones and you will have sound that's better than any speaker you can put in that room. Check out Headroom.com for great advice. If you want music without headphones, almost any speaker will do, but your serious listen will be with your headphones. If you never heard top notch earphone sound, you should give it a listen. You will be mighty impressed.