Small Room, Move Often, Speaker Suggestions.


Hello out there:

My job requires that I move often, and therefor, my listening room is usually small with little or no opportunity for treatment. I am considering the purchase of small monitors that will hopefully be more "room friendly" than my current floor standers.

The speakers will be powered with a LFD Mistral SE Amp (warm and tube like, 80 WPC), and AP Oval Nine cables.

My first thoughts are Tyler-Linbrook Monitors, Talon Audio Khites, Spendor S3/5 Monitors, small Sonus Fabers, etc.

Any thoughts, suggestions, and especially experience with the listed speakers will be greatly appreciated.

Best regards, Dave.
consttraveler
Overall, if you know your likely to be in smallish rooms in general, that are pretty rectangular and/or sealed off acoustically from the likes of hallway's, oppenings, other room connnections, etc, you should probably consider a sealed box speaker (as opposed to base reflex ported) with less bass extension! The smaller room is going to give you a bit of bass boost overall anyway, as opposed to likely possitioning in a larger room. Plus, what I've noticed from installing systems in small rooms over the years, is that it's much harder to get the speakers that play lower(usually ported) to have reasonably flat frequency response from any practical seating/speaker placement possition! The bass modes are just too steep and packed up in those rooms to get natural (non boomy/peaky/dippy) sound in small rooms usually(occasional exceptions from room to room of course).
Overall, you'll still have to play around with placement of things, and use careful consideration, if you want anything resembling good sound(especially in small rooms..especially).
May I consider something like, yes, the Spenders, or even better, the Merlin TSM-M's!!! AT around $2500 retail, they're impossible to beat! They're a sealed enclosure, and play down to about 50Hz +/-3 annechoically. In a small room, they do about 40hz realistically!(plenty low trust me) And you can augment with sub if you ever needed to.
They truely are world class, approaching (if not there) Solid Class A performance, and are an easy 87db to drive.(I think 8 ohms).
If you noticed, a lot of the high end rooms at CES show were using Merlins(TSM'm's or VSM'M's for their demo's!!!...and it's been this way for several years now!)
Anyway, it's a thought.
I used to use some very very very good Sonus Faber Electa Amator's and Minima Amator's($5k and $3k respectively), and these Merlins are better!!...and much better for small room acoustics in general, that's for darn sure.
Also, the Merlins can do tube gear or Solid state...My Electa's and Minima's only did SS well.
Good luck
A great speaker espescially at low level.I am using a vbt alpha d sub to fill in the bottom end.I keep switching between the amaze and my offrandes.
The bs1 is $599.
Dave...Cheap women'll getcha' every time! Save your pennies for the right one. Just make sure there's full disclosure about the nature of your disease (audiophilia-expensivitis) before making any significant commitments.

I've not heard the Khites or the Tylers, but they do each have a very good reputation. The Tylers may be difficult to place, however, in a small room. I believe that they're rear-ported which requires them to be pretty far away from the front wall and corners.

The Spendors are infinitely musical, as are the Sonus Fabers. The Spendors have the most glorious midrange you're likely to hear from a speaker in this price-range. But, if you're willing to spend the extra money, you can't go wrong with the SF Electa Amator. You can find them used here on the 'goN for around $2K. There's something about the whole line of Sonus Faber speakers that's just so engaging. Any of their montiors are relatively easy to place as well.
APV: Thanks for the info. I am using the Twins right now but will eventually want something more efficient for the living room.
Sonus Fabers small speakers are amazing. The Concertos sound very fine, but if you can afford them the Guaneri Homage is unreal for a small speaker.