Thoughts on Speakers for a Small Audio/Video Room

@ronboco My thought is that my room isn't ideal to start with, because it's smaller than the minimum volume I've read is required for a dedicated audio room.  Some people's stance is "if you can't meet that minimum volume, don't bother, it's never going to sound great".  But it's all I have, so I'm trying to make the best out of it, knowing I'm dual purposing the room (TV/Atmos and audio), loading all my media and spare gear in it, etc, so I'm consuming more room volume by having everything in there.  So it aggravates an already problematic starting point.

If I had a large enough room with the potential to be made great, I could see myself investing $ into some professional acoustic consulting.  But as it stands, I'm not sure what would likely be high hundreds to low thousands in investment with a professional acoustics company (consulting time, purchasing their custom solutions, etc) is really the right thing for a space that isn't ideal to begin with.  

It's possible that a professional company could do significant things to make my current speakers sound great, but if I invest big $ into analysis and custom treatments and it sounds better (but still not great) and it still drives me towards smaller speakers, then I'll honestly feel like I wasted my money.  Because as others have said, the optimal room treatments may be affected by characteristics of the speakers that you're optimizing for.  So I might need to do the analysis again with the new speakers.  I may be wrong, but that's my line of thought.

@gkelly How big are your panels?  Just curious.  

My current feeling is that I should do some basic room treatment (corners, first reflection points if needed, etc) and then try to find speakers that work well in the small space to minimize the remaining issues that need to be addressed and optimized for.

Then the remaining acoustic treatments can be fine tuning to optimize already good sound vs stamping out major issues.

While I suppose it's true that some combination of room optimization via treatments, EQ, etc, can make any given speaker sound pretty good in the room, if the starting point is a speaker that presents fewer fundamental challenges for the space in the first place, the sledding won't be as tough to improve things from there.

@captouch 

I understand your thinking but if you tell Jeff what type of sound you are looking for and send him some pics of the room he will let you know if it possible without charging you anything.I believe this is how he does it. You can ask. So you are out nothing.  If you go with him then you will pay for the design. I don’t know how tall your ceiling is but if it’s 9-10 ft it is about the same volume as my room. I am extremely happy with the sound of my system. Jeff is a no pressure person and I thoroughly enjoyed working with him. 

@ronboco Thanks for the further info, I appreciate it.  It’s a 8’ ceiling unfortunately.  But I’ll keep an open mind on this and won’t eliminate any options without at least weighing against other options.

@captouch  

Your welcome. Your room can definitely sound awesome ! 

@captouch Not sure what your budget might be for smaller monitors, but there are many good options to choose from. If I were you I might try for a local hifi shop (if one exists nearby) that would allow an in home trial. That will probably be very illuminating, and the easy returns very worthwhile.

The next best thing after that would be some of the big online sellers that offer easy returns. Even somewhat mainstream places like Crutchfield now have lots of quality speakers. You probably have to cover the cost of return shipping if they don't work out, but that shouldn't be too terrible on a pair of smallish monitors. 

If you like the Monitor Audio sound, I hear good things about the newest Gold 50 6G which are quite small. Or, maybe a front ported design would be advantageous in your space? I recently heard the Triangle Theta Signature and was very impressed.