Thoughts on Speakers for a Small Audio/Video Room

I believe that it would be well worth your time to work out the acoustics of your room before giving up on your Aerial loudspeakers.  I am not convinced that stuffing the ports are a valid approach. The overwhelming bass is due to speaker placement exciting a room node.  

Have you tried moving them forward - closer to your listening position & possibly a bit closer together?  I am getting at a "near-field" arrangement which many times helps ameliorate room anomalies.  Check-out the "Cardas Audio" Near Field room set up: https://www.cardas.com/system-setup

Diffusers on the back wall could pay large dividends as well.

You may find yourself enjoying what you have without giving up your Aerials.

Best of luck

I own Aerial 7s (the original) and my room is 12’-2” by 11’ after downsizing; I ended up using GIK Impressionist Corner Bass Traps which helped.

Unfortunately, your room constraints doesn’t appear to be workable for that option (as well as bringing the speakers closer together).

Every so often, I toy with the idea of getting more suitable speakers but then there is that glorious mid range…

if you’re into open baffle and want to address the node issues, that may be helpful (or DSP).

Good Luck!

Hi Capt.

I do electronically tune my system to the room. I chose that path, rather than tuning the room to the system for primarily economic reasons. I felt that for an approximate $450.00 investment I could get 80% to 90% to where I wanted the room/system interaction to be. That’s not to say that someday I won’t also invest in room treatments, because there are pluses and minuses to everything and I firmly believe that a hybrid approach will yield the best results, but total WAG here, room treatments done correctly for my room will come in somewhere around 2k to 5k and at this time I have other expenses that are more important.

https://forum.audiogon.com/posts/2760263
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my ceilings are only about 7’ high. I don’t have a lot of room treatments, I just realized the full range floor standing speakers were just too much. I don’t miss bass as the B&W’s pack a good punch when needed. But I also have two B&W 8” powered subs, one on each channel, fed by the speaker terminals of each speaker. Have them set to come in where the 805’s drop off. The sound is amazing to me.

@perazzi28 With the new Concerto Domus speakers, I did try a lot more positions to minimize the effect of room nodes.  I was able to hear that in certain forward/back spots, the bass was bloated and in other spots, it was much better controlled and tighter.  I have yet to go back and try that with the Aerials.  With the Aerials being rear ported, I’m sure the best spot will be different, but it’s worth a try.

What I am able to say is that, at least with a speaker the size of the Concerto Domus, it doesn’t overwhelm the room.  I’ll have to see how the Aerials fare.  
 

As you see in my pics, there’s not much room on the back wall for diffusers, unless I put them on the cabinet doors.  As far as near-field, I need to look more into that.  I tend to like a large soundstage, and I’ve found that toe-ing in speakers compresses the soundstage.  So my perception was that near field might compress it even more.  But I could be misunderstanding how near field affects things.

@deecee Yes, I think we’ve been in the same Aerial thread on AK.  I’ll take a look at those bass traps you mentioned.

@turkster3 For me, there’s a level of bass that’s enough.  I don’t necessarily need subterranean bass, just not to feel like there’s something meaningful there that I’m missing out on.  I think at least now, with all the room contents, additional subs would be a challenge.  But what I’m getting with these smaller speakers seems enough so far.