Small Office - Wilson vs B&W vs Kef

I have the same room size but have made it a little bigger by being a little creative. Take a look here.

https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/7605

I was thinking I have to settle on a small monitor in this room since it is small. Adding the GIK acoustic panels made me think I could get a floor stander in here. My room actually sounds really good with the gear you see in the photos.

Researching DSP approaches convinced me that I can get a bigger speaker in here. My listening is 80% digital and the rest FM radio and a modified SACD/CD player with analog only output.

The speaker I am going to get is the Yamaha NS5000. It is a rather big speaker for a "bookshelf" and has a huge woofer. Not something you would think someone should put into a small room. I am in conversation with a fellow A’goner from Canada who just bought the NS5000 and his room is just a little bigger than mine and not acoustically treated yet.

The feedback from him was that the speaker sounds incredible in a nearfield setup. Even better than at the dealer’s massive room (which makes sense). I also listen at low to mid volume level and keep my office door open. All these help in getting more enjoyable sound in the small room.

These are the following speakers I have gone out and demoed for my office.

Vivid Kaya 45
Magico A3
KEF Reference 1
Yamaha NS5000
Vandersteen Treo CT
Paradigm Persona 3F

Almost all of them were very agreeable with me (except 1), with the Yamaha coming out on top. I also think the Yamaha has the most bass out of all of these speakers, though this is not an important factor for me.

Getting back to DSP. I was looking at hardware based DSP solutions implemented in a preamp or integrated amp. This was limiting to me and not making me happy since I was more interested in preamps and amps that did not have internal DSP (Luxman, Mola Mola). What saved the day for me was learning about doing DSP using convolution files running in ROON or JRiver. My understanding after some research (including reading a book) was that DSP done via convolution files has the capability to outperform the hardware based approaches since there is more control in the configuration settings.

Now I am not a DSP expert so the chances of me utilizing this technology properly is rather low. However, I found out that this DSP convolution file creation can be outsourced and done remotely by DSP audio professionals. The cost was not that expensive based on the quotes I got.

I can give you more details if you are interested via PM. I was just reading today on the Audiostream web site a review of the Sonore OpticalRendu. It is another component in the solution for my office I came up with a few months ago.

Convolution filters attempt to completely perfect the output of a speaker.  They're IMHO over hyped, and limited in their effectiveness.

Better to get speakers you like the sound of and use DSP with a delicate hand. Here's how I used Roon to clean up my own room response.

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-snr-1-room-response-and-roon.html

When you say in your opinion have you tried it yourself with a good microphone or are you just assuming?

The guy I plan on having do the convolution files for me is mitchco from Audiophile Style web site. Have a look through his book or his reviews on that web site. I find that the guys on the AS web site are rather knowledgeable, especially digital 

https://accuratesound.ca/

https://www.amazon.com/Accurate-Sound-Reproduction-Using-DSP-ebook/dp/B01FURPS40/ref=sr_1_1?crid=XTNC15INNFHT&dchild=1&keywords=accurate+sound+reproduction+using+dsp&qid=1585462693&sprefix=Accurate+Sound%2Caps%2C213&sr=8-1

That size room? Tekton Ulfberht. I hear they disappear.

I make my own loudspeakers, so I have 2 calibrated microphones. The issue with convolution are several.

I mean, by all means, go ahead and try it. The issues are in my mind that you cannot fix room acoustic issues such as reflection points from speaker output alone, measuring how we perceive sound in a non-anechoic field is hard, and lastly, most of us are just not that sensitive to the phase issues these systems purport to fix. All of these points are made better by Floyd Toole than me, but I’m in agreement. What I haven’t seen him do is complain about the CPU needed to execute them.

One critical point Toole makes, which convolution filters cannot solve, is that how we perceive sound is not how a microphone does. Dirac is one type of product that has some interesting techniques to address this, so if you are going with the hammer approach to using DSP, I’d suggest looking into DiracLive instead.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against EQ, I’m against expecting too much from them. Convolution filters are cute, and naive. In a heavily treated room with 1 listening location I am sure they’ll work fine. Dirac seems to have a much more sophisticated approach to how they calculate their filters and attempts to deal with the criticism Toole makes. Personally, I’m on the team of using room treatment plus a few carefully chosen filters to fix what I must, and I am extremely happy that way.

And lets not forget speaker dispersion.  Hsu and Klipsch make some small 2-ways with horn loaded tweeters which are probably going to sound a lot better in cramped spaces.