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.
Thoughts on Speakers for a Small Audio/Video Room
Hoping to get some thoughts from the group here.
I recently moved into a dedicated TV/audio room, but the room size is on the small side: 15.5ft x 11.5ft. As pics will show, there's quite a bit in there, so empty volume is decreased further due to that.
I've been using Aerial Acoustics Model 7B speakers, which I've been very happy with in larger spaces, but they seem to be overwhelming the room and I'm getting fairly overwhelming bass. Vocals have sort of a chestiness/congested nature to them, and there are bass undertones to most songs. If I play records loud, I need to activate my rumble filter, which I never used to have to do. As a sidetone, I also have Monitor Audio Gold Reference 20's in my collection.
Preamp is a recapped Mcintosh C35 and amp is a recapped MC2255. Phono pre is a VTL TP 2.5 II, TT is a Marantz TT-15S1 running a SAE1000LT MM cart.
I borrowed a friend's Sonus Faber Electa Amator II's and they sounded very good in my room - sweeter, more natural, no congestion, though I did give up bass slam/impact, which I kind of missed.
Here are pictures of the room:
Front:
Back:
I'm playing around now with plugging the rear ports of the Aerial, as well as putting some acoustic panels in the back corners of the room. Both of those seem to have helped quite a bit.
As far as measurements, those Aerials are currently about 80" apart, 16" from speaker back to front of cabinet, 96" from each speaker to the listening position.
What's your opinion: With some room treatments/plugged ports, can the Aerials work well in a room of this size, or do I need to move toward smaller speakers?
If I go smaller, any thoughts on something like the Sonus Faber Concerto Domus (there's a pair local to me) or Sonetto III? Those seem to be more modestly sized, don't go as low. Would those be at least a lateral to the AA Model 7B's, or a step down in terms of overall speaker quality? I only mention Sonus Faber models as I was impressed with my friend's speakers and generally do enjoy the smoother, more musical speakers and will give up some detail/pinpoint accuracy if needed to avoid brightness/listening fatigue.
Thanks all. . .
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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. |
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. 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. |
@audiorusty No separate isolation, but there is a TT shelf attached to the wall, so isolated from my bouncy wood floors, but that’s it. Besides the four subs and DSP, did you take a lot of other actions (room treatments for example) to make your room workable?
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