Component Advice for Small Room with Lively Surfaces

Thanks very much for your suggestion. Very much appreciate it. Had not even considered the setup you recommended. Sound quality is much more important than pretty furniture so wide open there. You have a phenomenal system...would you recommend tubes in my case? I was also thinking of an integrated amp but maybe separates would be better? Wide open to any thoughts and suggestions. Many thanks!  

In my opinion working "with the room" rather than "against the room" matters a great deal... especially in small, lively room. Two things come to mind:

First, we want the reverberant sound to have essentially the same spectral balance as the direct sound. When the reflections sound like the first-arrival sound the timbre tends to be nice and rich, assuming the frequency response is good.

Second, in general early reflections are much more likely to be degrade clarity and/or image precision (including depth) than later ones, so if possible we’d like to be able to "aim" the speakers to avoid strong early sidewall reflections. Ime the smaller the room, the more critical this becomes.

Two technologies which can meet both criteria without reliance on room treatments are: Dipole speakers, and horn speakers... in both cases, assuming they are "done right".

A dipole speaker with a well-behaved, uniform radiation pattern can generate a reverberant field which is spectrally correct, and can be aimed to avoid strong early sidewall reflections. IF they can be placed fairly far out from the wall - five feet is my recommendation - then the backwave energy arrives after a long enough time delay that it is beneficial.

A low-coloration constant-directivity horn loudspeaker can likewise be aimed to avoid early sidewall reflections, while offering greater placement flexibility than a dipole since it doesn’t need "breathing room" for the backwave. Horn speakers tend to be much more efficient than other types, which means they must either be quite large to produce good low bass, or else they usually need help from subwoofers for the bottom octave or two.

In an ideal setup with either speaker type, we can minimize the "small room signature" cues of the playback room while effectively presenting the spatial cues on the recording. Thus even in a fairly small and lively room, we can hear "more of the recording" and "less of the room."

Disclaimer: I am commercially involved with both types of speakers, which means that I voted for these ideas with my wallet, and you are of course invited to take this with as many grains of salt as you like. 

Duke

Thanks very much for your suggestion. Very much appreciate it. Had not even considered the setup you recommended. Sound quality is much more important than pretty furniture so wide open there. You have a phenomenal system...would you recommend tubes in my case? I was also thinking of an integrated amp but maybe separates would be better? Wide open to any thoughts and suggestions.

I would totally recommend an integrated tube amp. You will find it very hard indeed to beat that Raven integrated with any combination of separates without spending a lot more money. Not only for the components, which you cannot even come close to the Raven for $3-4k, but then as well with the extra power cord and interconnect the separates require. Its not even close. 

Plus Raven is made here in the USA. Well technically Texas, which is even better.

The components I listed are exactly what I would get were I in a situation of having to buy it all from scratch and knowing what I know now. This system will be a bit heavy on the front end. That is to say, in terms of it being a starting point (systems usually are a starting point no matter what anyone says) the turntable/arm/cart/phono stage will be essentially lifetime awesome. The DBA will be lifetime awesome. Rough estimate your budget will be about $5k for all the wire. So wire, and accessories like HFT, ECT, and some other details (tweaks) will be your logical areas for upgrades for the next little while.

But you will not need more power. You will be beside yourself with pleasure and finding it hard to believe such awesome sound quality is even possible, as it will be better than anything you have heard, or indeed likely ever will hear, for quite some time to come. Especially in terms of bass. You absolutely will never experience bass anything like what you will get with a DBA. All the rest will be awesome but the bass will have you shaking your head in disbelief over and over again. 

PS- Duke, Audiokinesis who posted above, is the designer and seller of the Swarm subwoofer system, and helped me build mine.

My thoughts are:

Speaker Dispersion: If you can handle a tight listening area, get speakers with controlled dispersion. Horns, panels, line arrays and bi-polars are good ideas.

Acoustics: As I read your description, you don’t have a lot of surface area you can treat, so treat the ceiling and floor as much as you can, as well as the stone wall. Also, consider standing up GIK soffit traps in the corners.

https://www.gikacoustics.com/

EQ: Consider a pre or integrated with built in room correction like Anthem. This will help you get the most out of your speakers with least effort.

https://anthemav.com/products/series=str-series

Strongly encourage you to talk to GIK first, get the best you can in room acoustics, followed by EQ. More at my post here:

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-to-not-buy-subwoofer.html

"In my opinion working "with the room" rather than "against the room" matters a great deal... especially in small, lively room"

This makes alot of sense Duke and I am wondering if there are any particular dipoles and horns that you would recommend? Thank you