What is would be a small listening room size?

go by cubic feet (Height X Width X )Length.

12X12 with 7.5' ceiling (~ 1100 cubic feet)is towards the small end of the spectrum.

Your room is 1530 cubic feet, ~ 30 % larger, still towards the smaller end of the spectrum I would say.

I'd say 8000-9000 cubic feet is the ballpark of a typical "large" room.

12X17 is a great size for a listening room. It's at the lower end of medium in size.

Size is in the eye of the beholder,three inches to some is eight !!! Oh, never mind.

Your room is medium, small would be 10x10x8.

8000 = 40x20x10h, no?

That seems to me a very large room, with a footprint comparable to many houses, in many parts of the country.

I might call your room medium; I think many speakers designed for smaller spaces would start to swim, and you could accommodate some larger room designs.

John

12'x17' is definitely a small room.

15'x20' would be a medium size room.

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ymisc&1239284130&openmine&zzWinoguy17&4&5#Winoguy17

Medium.

I use the terms "small", "medium", etc. to reflect a room's suitability for large, high end speakers. Many large, full-range systems produce enough bass to overwhelm a typical 12 x 17 x 7.5 space. Many large planars will physically dominate such a space. In my book, a large listening room can accomodate all but the lunatic fringe loudspeakers.....which need very large ("huge"?, "palatial"?) rooms. IMO, the space the OP describes will probably be too small for best results with a LOT of high end speakers that will work well in large rooms.

That said, when I look at the "systems" links for some 'goners, I see some very large speakers stuffed pretty tightly into smallish spaces, so - evidently - some other might use similar critera and reach a different conclusion.

Marty

Your room is comparable in size to mine. (around 14X19X8)
I consider our rooms small. Better suited for small to medium floorstanders.

Here's a concrete example:

My old speakers, North Creek Eska's, were a slender MTM mini tower designed for near wall placement small to medium rooms. They were housed in 13x13x9h room, open on two sides, and worked very well.

I've moved, and the room is 14x20x8.5h, pretty open on two sides; the Eskas, lovely as they are, pretty clearly lacked presence in this space. I replaced them with some fairly large (150 lbs, 53"h, 2 8" woofs) Montana EPS2s, which work very well. In fact, I think the room could handle larger speakers that move more air.

So based on my experience, the OPs room, of pretty similar size to mine, counts as a medium room that does not limit him to small speakers (depending of course on factors like the desired distance from boundaries.

YMMV, of course. Interesting that there are divergent strongly held opinions on this issue.

John

WHAT F'INFG DIFFERENCE DOES OTHER'S RESONSES MAKE?

What is the objective of your question?

My room is (small), however the recreation of the recorded event is HUGE.

That is all that matters.

Do other's opinions have so much of an influence upon you that you will make a major change to your system?

Get real!!!

Get real!!!

Huh?

IMO, OP has a legitimate question, Slaw.

For example, discussions of speakers/amplification and often reference room size, so good to know what people have in mind.

John