smaller speakers for critical listening?


I'm curious whether folks out here think that standmount speakers can reward "critical listening." 

I know that may be a ridiculous question; of course one can sit down with Radio Shack speakers and engage in serious listening, and of course the experience is subjective for all of us. I'm actually asking for subjective responses here. If your goal is a system for critical listening, do you think smaller speakers can do the trick or do you need the bigger soundstage and depth that can come with floor-standing, planar, or electrostatic speakers? 

I'm not asking which is *better* in a given speaker line, the small ones or the big ones, and I'm not thinking about $50k Wilson-Benesch Endeavours or the like. Before the pandemic I auditioned some highly enjoyable standmount speakers in the $5k-$10k range. However, listening for an hour in a store, I couldn't tell whether they crossed the threshold from "terrific sound for a small speaker" to pull-up-a-chair-and-tune-out-the-world bliss.

As you can probably tell, I'm struggling with my room; it's very hard to place big speakers in it. Otherwise I'd buy Maggies or Vandersteens or JA Perspectives, etc, and be happy. And, to repeat, I know that the threshold for critical-listening speakers is subjective. I'm asking for opinions and experiences!
northman
If you're in the Los Angeles area, contact Tony Minasian (Toninlabs.com) and arrange a listen to his latest effort, the G6 monitor. You'll stop searching right then and there.

All the best,
Nonoise
I guess I have to ask "what is 'critical listening'"? You hook up some Radio Shack speakers. You know they're cheap. So what are you critiquing?
Radio Shack made some surprisingly good speakers and some other ones too :)

They are most noted for having purchased Linaeum so they could use the Linaeum tweeter. The Optimus Pro LX5 got some good comments in the high end audio press. These days they need new woofers and there are good replacements. I picked up a set for $50.00 and replaced the woofers. So when I play them, I'm listening for imaging and depth. However they don't work well in my bedroom system because of the rear0firing information from the tweeters, and I have to have the speakers very near the wall behind them.


I've also been playing with the Radio Shack Minimus 7 speakers for my desktop. They made a variety of versions of this speaker and apparently the early ones are considered the best. However all of them tend to have a brightness due to superposition effects since the woofer isn't rolled off. In addition the capacitor in the tweeter crossover is a non-polar electrolytic. So what people do with this speaker is install a film cap for the tweeter and a choke (about 2.1mH) in series with the woofer, plus a few other parts to smooth out the response. Measured on-axis response is quite flat once this is done, and off-axis response is smooth. So they image quite well and are nicely detailed; if I am doing critical listening, I'm not really thinking about the speakers, although I never play them very loud.


I am using a sub crossed at about 60Hz.
@atmasphere , you're absolutely right and I'm glad you called me out on that. I was looking for a small, inexpensive set of speakers for a second room and I remember the owner of a hi-end stereo store lowering his voice, smiling, and suggesting I head down to Radio Shack. "Great speaker at a great price." I can't remember when that was but maybe 1990? I picked up a pair of wee ones and they served me well until just last year.