My music room is 10 x 15 and I sit 12 feet away from my speakers. I see these Von Schweikerts vr-4 jr mk2 model on Agon. Great price, great reviews, but huge speakers. Is my room too small for these and if so how large can I go?
put room treatment in, and you will be fine. see my system pics.
without room treatment, its will never be much beyond midfi. you listen to your speakers interacting with your room being fed by your electronics, in that order.
I used to have an 11'x13' room...best sound I had, after many trys (planar, stand mount, floor standing) were mid-sized, front-ported monitors (Paradigm S2) in a near-field (6' speaker to ear) setup - magical! ...although the Totem Arro was a very close second! Electronics were Naim.
The bigger the speaker, the more challenging it was to shoehorn all that sound into the room and not end up sounding "lumpy".
I would never sit with my head near a wall. It is better to listen nearfield than sit next to a wall. Sitting next to a wall is about the worst thing you can do.
Actually I just measured the room and its 10x18.The ceiling is 9 ft. I definitely plan on some room treatment. I have Jolida 801a reference series upgrades, my Scoutmaster with ginko base is on the way, thanks to agon, with a Van den hul mc 10 and my current speakers are Quad IIL bi wired. The vocals from these speakers are pure honey but I need more dynamic sound.
I would suggest long wall setup (except for dipoles that aren't too sensitive to side walls). I don't agree that sitting next to a wall is bad as long as the wall behind you is damped with acoustic panels at least 4 inches thick.
If I recall correctly, this room and your seating position should work with the "AudioPhysic" set-up method ... hence Audio Physic speakers would probably be a good choice. Virgos are great sounding speakers, and the Mk I are a bargain these days
No - My room is 10' 4" x 16' and well treated, I have speakers out 58" from front wall and sit 9' away.
I had the VR4 Jrs and coudlnt stand them, sold them in 2 weeks. I used a Pass X250 amp and VPI Super scout master as my equipment. They just never sounded right ( I spent 2 weeks moving them around to no avail)
In my room I owned and liked Spendor SP1/2e B&W 801 Matrix III Currently have Revel F52 - blows them all away
FWIW, my room is 11*15, speakers along long wall, my seat < 1' from rear wall, which is treated w/ 4" thick bass panels behind my head, reflective side out; the ear ignores reflections < 10ms which a panel close to the head provides in mid-upper freq's while absorbing bass freq's which take longer to reflect and thus cause smearing, as Daverz mentioned.
i'm +/- 5db to 40hz or so IIRC. without room treatments, expect to be +/- 20db. seriously
Thanks to all of you, so bottom line here is treat the room and use whatever speakers I want? I see so many room set ups, even small rooms with Van Schweikerts VR4 jr mk 2 I figure these have to be good. So thats my choice.
I have a dedicated room that is 10x11. In a room this size, I think you are forced to use a speaker that is small(ish) and that does not reproduce much bass below about 50hz. Trying to shoehorn a speaker that is too large for your room is probably a recipe for failure IMHO.
a) Early onset of reflections, much of which is inevitable. Coloration and image shift are both more likely to arise from early-onset reflections than from later-arriving ones, although direction of arrival and spectral content also play a role.
b) Room-induced gain over-emphasize the bass region, often resulting in boominess.
c) Room modes are more likely to be audibly detrimental in the bass region because modal behavior will set in at a higher frequency than in a larger room. This can cause or contribute to one-note bass/boominess/otherwise unnatural-sounding bass.
d) Some speakers need a fair amount of power to "come to life", which can work against getting good sound at the modest power levels typically required for adequate SPLs in a small room.
e) Placement constraints are often especially severe in a small room, which makes it more difficult to address the first three issues by optimizing speaker placement.
All of these problems can be addressed to some extent at the design stage. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the VR4 Jr. to comment on its suitability for a small room.
A buddy has Avalon Eidelons in a 10' x 9' room. The equipment sits between and back of speakers. He has exacted an incredibly musical sound in this most unconventional space...like having superb headphones.
Long wall placement would be my suggestion as well. As mentioned previously the Audio Physics speaker placement method works very well, even with other brands of speakers. I used this method with a pair of Spendor speakers with great success. Don't be afraid to put your listening chair within a few feet of the rear wall. As mentioned, just make sure you have some thick absorption panels on that wall.
My room measures 11.5 by 14 and I sit very nearfield ( 54 in.) For the most part this works for me. Velodyne DDs' in stereo have helped a lot but have required a lot of work. POI small rooms pressurize ( as opposed to unfold wavelength) at a higher freq. So I guess my solution is small monitors worn as headphones sitting on subs.
You're fine at that room size. I've recently acquired a new home and gave up my much larger room. The room I'm in now is actually just slightly smaller than yours. I feared I'd not experience as good a soundstage, but I'm happy to report that wasn't the case. In some respects having a smaller room I've found the sound is less room dependent, and the overall experience is more intimate than I ever imagined possible. I experimented with long wall vs short wall placement, and chose long wall to give me greater listening distance. Speaker interactions with the room have been far less on the long wall as well.
Thanks for all the advice. I listened to some B and W's and some Aeriels last week end. Aeriels sound great and not too big. I'm going to Von Schweikerts this Saturday to listen to VR 33's then make a choice.
I agree with some comments that room treatments do help when a considerably large speaker is placed in a relatively small room. However, there are still limitations as some speakers will perform better if they are placed out from wall boundaries. I'm not too sure about VR4 Jr whether they are able to fit into a width of 10 ft. In my experience most conventional box speakers require a minimum space of 2'(clear distance) from side walls in order to sound acceptable. One method to ameliorate the ill-effects of close placement to wall boundaries is to listen in nearfield configuration as suggested by Soulbrass and Elizabeth in the event one experiences bass issues or a collapse in soundstage (when the speakers are placed very close to wall boundaries).
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