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New house room size opinions please........

Hi All,

Looking into new house and so far we have 7 "contenders" wich means a room of my own, most houses have rooms in the 13X21 to 24ft range, all in basements. I ran into a house today wich looks great, has alot of other features we would like but a room that is only 14X18 and I wonder if this can still be an ideal room for my use, the room my gear is in now is 13X17 and am pretty happy even though it is our living room so a large cabinet and TV are in between speakers wich kills any performance other then average.
I was hoping to be in a room where I had more room from back wall but if we picked this house should I expect enough improvement by gaining the center image to ignore the fact I will be maybe 2-3 feet from back wall?
Speakers are VMPS FF3SRE and are large but tunable with woofer tuning and active outboard crossover and I never once felt they over-loaded my current room. One thing to consider is in the new room I will listen roughly 10ft from speakers, my couch in current room is against back wall and could be closer but living room WAF issues stand in the way, if in that new room I went 3-4 ft from back wall, sat 10-11 feet away I would have 3 feet behind me, speakers would be 7 ft apart and almost 3 feet from side walls, all in all what do you guys think? Thanks a bunch for your time.....Chad
chadnliz
jaybo
4,478 posts
 
let your wife pick the house...don't even offer an opinion, or you'll pay for it down the road in ways too bizarre to imagine.
jaybo
4,478 posts
 
ps...great system
rushton's avatar
rushton
2,445 posts
 
Chadnliz, I went through the house search process recently and I commiserate with you on the challenges of finding the right combination of house and listening room. FWIW, my belief has always been to try to go larger than 21 feet if possible, and avoid substantially square rooms. The difference in support for the bottom end in a larger is pretty significant. You can drive yourself nuts over finding the right room with the "just-the-right" dimension ratios. But, you can overcome some imperfect ratios if you have enough volume to begin with. You can't make the room larger.

I'm a soundstaging nut, and I love a system setup that can both maintain accurate timbre and recreate a believable acoustic space. I find the best mix of factors for doing this usually involves being able to get the speakers (dynamic drivers) well out in front of the wall behind them 4-6 feet or so) and decently out from the side walls. I also find it very satisfying to work with a space where my listening seat is 6-10' from the wall behind my head. (Of course all this changes depending on room dimensions.)

Good luck!
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uru975
684 posts
 
I agree with Jaybo on both counts, but especially on the house. Your house is where you live and listening to music may be a large part of your life but it is not the entire center of it or your wife would not still be with you.
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