Thoughts on Speakers for a Small Audio/Video Room

@wyoboy I do think addressing the room and optimizing speaker placement can definitely help and perhaps make my 7B’s workable.  But I guess the question in my mind is whether it’s still a matter of degree.  Meaning if you start with a smaller speaker, maybe sealed, you have fewer/smaller issues, relatively speaking, to address versus starting with a much larger ported speaker.  
 

@desktopguy Along the lines of the above, would you say that a sealed speaker would be easier, but still requires addressing the room and optimizing placement?  Intuitively, it seems to me that rear ported speakers (if limited in how far you can pull them away from the front wall) would be most difficult, followed by front ported, followed by sealed.  And size is another factor that plays into it as well in some way.

@elliottbnewcombjr I’m in the South Bay near 17/85.

Here’s one methodology I read about regarding speaker setup.  What do you all think of this?

“Start with one speaker by playing bass heavy music and dragging one speaker out from the rear wall until the bass locks with the room. As you drag the speaker from the wall you will hear the bass change in character as the speaker moves through null points in the room. Next you play vocal music and drag the second speaker out from the rear wall until you have a tight center image. In is important to note that (unless you are in a perfectly symmetrical room) the speakers may not be the same distance from the rear wall (mine are not). Next play with toein to get the right balance between sound stage. Lastly you adjust the rake angle until you hear the right balance between the tweeter woofer from the listening spot.”

If you treat the room as much as you’re willing/able, use speakers that make your treatment and placement tasks as manageable as possible, and follow an organized and logical setup methodology like the one above, perhaps that will allow one to find a reasonably satisfying result?

My friends has identical room size like yours. He is using diffusers, foam treatment , it works. If I were you I will audition monitors like Kef meta LS 50, Alnico Omega speakers. He also toe in about 2 inches .Your room is ok just used the right size speakers. And if you have audiophile friend let Him help you to listen to your system, sorry to say Mc Intosth and Aerial speakers for me are not good match. My  guess the Kef and omega Alnico will.

I acquired a new-to-me set of speakers to try out: Sonus Faber Concerto Domus speakers from 2005-6 timeframe.  Previous generations of the Concerto were stand mounts, the Domus is a smaller floor stander, but still two-way with similar sized drivers as the previous generations.  Front port.  7” midwoofer, 1” tweeter, 88dB, 4 ohms.  39” tall, 8” wide, 12” deep.

This was inspired by the fact that I enjoyed my friend’s Electa Amator II’s, which granted are a different vintage and several price classes above.

With the room armed with just the 12” wide generic acoustic panels (not dedicated bass traps) in the rear corners and the acoustic foam within all the canvas pictures in my room, but none of the large beige panels against the wall, I started to try and position them in my room.

I started out locating them forward back in the room by trying to play a bass heavy track (Morph the Cat) and position for tightness/contol and no bloat or overpowering feeling.  I was ended up 34.5/47” from back wall (back of speaker/front of speaker).  Since I have front cabinets, I measured distance of 17-18”/28.5-29.5” from front cabinet (back of speaker/front of speaker).  Again, it’s a front ported speaker.

The bass on this quite bass heavy track was low, well controlled, tight - no bloated, resonant sounding over/undertones, which I did hear at some other forward/back positioning.

I didn’t play with distance from side walls as a variable yet, but did my listening at 28.5” from sidewalls (between side wall and center of front of soeaker and 79” between speakers.  The speakers were 110” from listening position.

I was pleased with the soundstage, imaging, tonality.  There were a couple of songs that at higher volumes were a bit aggressive sounding.  Putting the large beige acoustic panels at the first reflection points on the side walls tamed those more aggressive vocals, but those songs that sounded fine without them were a little more polite with the panels in place.

I didn’t play with rake/lean yet, just screwed the spikes in all the way which results in a rearward lean.

There was one song I couldn’t do anything with (Girl from Ipanema).  When Joao Gilberto is singing at the beginning of the song, I get ugly sounding resonance, which no matter front back placement or adding more sound panels could I get rid of.  This was using the streaming version, I’ll try the CD or vinyl as a sanity check.  Even tried plugging the front ports, which helped some but didn’t solve it.  Made me wonder if whatever frequencies he was singing at was resonating with the speaker cabinet itself!  (I know most probably not, but it was a weird thing to not be able to do anything at all with that).

I’m play more songs, adjust rake/lean, fine tune from here, but it’s promising so far.

Pic of speakers in space.

I double checked the problematic track and it was 90% better playing a CD.  The Amazon Music version of Girl from Ipanema is very bad to my ears (loud and compressed and those unpleasant resonances seem to be baked into the track itself).

Hi Captouch,

Are you using any type of isolation under your turntable?

If not, I use the Townshend Seismic Vibration Isolation platform, and it works quite well.

https://www.townshendaudio.com/hi-fi-home-cinema-equipment-vibration-isolation/hi-fi-home-cinema-equipment-vibration-isolation-platform/

As a point of reference my room is 14’ 4” x 10’ 6” x 9’. My system, consists of 8 speakers, 4) 12” subs. 2) 8” mid bass cabinets and 2) mid/hi cabinets. It’s a four way system, three way active. I have been known to hit peaks as high as 119 db. The four subs help smooth out a lot of the nodes, though I still had an approximate 80 Hz standing wave issue that I have been able to eliminate by adjusting the the crossover point and using a parametric e.q. band in my DSP unit. The bass in my room has all the slam/impact that the music calls for and I have no issue with overloading the room or any bass boom at all.

You can get there with out giving up the slam/impact, you just have to keep plugging away. You might want to contact someplace like GIK Acoustics and see if they have some thoughts.