Cost no Object but Small Room

I have a small room too and recently contacted John DeVore at DeVore Fidelity about his line of speakers, particularly the Silverbacks. He claims that they would work well in rooms about the size of yours. Don't know if you have any dealers in HK, but lots of folks rave about these speakers and I hope to check them out in the not too distant future.

Any thoughts on using MBL's in this situation?

Omnis, dipoles, bipoles, and polydirectional speakers work best when they can be set up such that the onset of side-wall and rear-wall reflections reaches the listener's ears at least 10 milliseconds after the first-arrival sound. The 10 milliseconds isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but a fuzzy rule-of-thumb based on psychoacoustics. Actually this applies to all speakers, but is more likely to be a concern with omnis, dipoles, bipoles, and polys. The 10 milliseconds corresponds to a path length of about 11 feet, so in other words you'd want the early reflection paths to be at least 11 feet longer than the direct path from the drivers to your ears (including the reflection off the wall behind the listener, if possible). This is usually not practical in a small room.

In my opinion a small room calls for speakers with a well-controlled radiation pattern and/or smooth power response, as inevitably the bulk of the reverberant energy will arrive earlier than in a larger room. Too much of a spectral discrepancy between direct and reverberant energy can give rise to listening fatigue in any room, but especially in a small one.

I'm presently working on a design intended to perform well in a small room, but I'm shooting for a much lower price point. Nevertheless, the above principles of acoustics and psychoacoustics are applicable even to speakers with exotic drivers.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

Here's another way to go. Get a dedicated headphone amp,and the best earphones and you will have sound that's better than any speaker you can put in that room. Check out Headroom.com for great advice. If you want music without headphones, almost any speaker will do, but your serious listen will be with your headphones. If you never heard top notch earphone sound, you should give it a listen. You will be mighty impressed.

OOPS - The web site for headphones is Headphones.com - the place is Headroom. Sorry