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speakers for a smaller listening room

I recently moved and managed to get a dedicated listening room (yay!), but its a little on the small side at 12 x11 feet. My current speakers are B&W CDM 9NT's, purchased when they were for a much larger room. Do i stand much chance of getting these to work well in a room this size? I currently have them 3 ft from the back wall, and about 2ft from the side walls, with the chair about 1ft from the back wall. The bass is pretty lumpy, and there's a lot of HF echo/clatter, i have some traps on the way to try and tame things, but are there any fundamental issues that would prevent a floor stander of that size working in such a small room? Any suggestions on position changes?

Thanks
Simon
zak42
learsfool
1,215 posts
 
My brother has a very similar sized room to yours, and he uses an old pair of Sound Dynamics 300Ti's. They are stand mounted and sound pretty good in the space.
ablang
165 posts
 
One more setup idea. Try placing the speakers halfway into the room with your listening seat right against the wall behind you. This'll make it a near-field setup, and the bass might even out without the ports so close to the wall behind them. You also might try plugging the ports.
blkadr
739 posts
 
You might end up going to a smaller set of speakers rolling off before deep bass and adding a sub. Sometimes you can "tune out" the biggest problem somewhere between your speakers and the sub(s). This might be your only option in some rooms for getting deep bass without going to room correction.
josh358
286 posts
 
Just wanted to add my voice to that of those who say equalize first. All small rooms have bass problems in the absence of equalization or treatment. Equalization works just fine for one listener; equalization plus treatment works even better for one listener, and helps with multiple listeners as well. And don't forget that results are highly dependent on both speaker and listener position.

HF crap is easily dealt with with absorption and diffusion. It really doesn't take too much absorption in a room that size, the effect of absorption is magnified in a smaller room. Just add it a bit at a time, you don't want to make the room too dead.
daverz
487 posts
 
I'd try working with these speakers a little more before giving up.

Have you tried measuring with some test tones and an SPL meter to narrow down where the frequency humps are?

You could try the trick of sitting a foot from the back wall while damping the standing wave there with 4" thick panels (say three 2'x4' panels to start). This would allow getting the speakers well out from the front wall and still allow a decent separation for soundstage width. With the speakers along the 12' wall you could have a 6' listening triangle with the speakers 4' out from the front wall and 3' from the side walls.

I suppose after that you could try EQ with 1 or more subwoofers or an outboard digital room correction box.

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