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Vintage Advents too big for small room?

In my current house, where I'll be for at least another 5 years, my listening room is only 12' by 12'. I have New Advents, owned since new in 1978, tweeters replaced under warranty by the better ferrofluid ones, woofers replaced about 10 years ago with OEMs from Jensen, who owned Advent at the time. They're still beautiful and do everything they've always done, but they completely overwhelm this smaller room. I have no real choice but to place them in the corners. I've moved them out 6 inches, but that didn't help appreciably.

I've thought of two options: 1) buy some stands for the Advents in the hope of decoupling them from the room a little more, or 2) go with some much smaller monitors and stands that, just because of their size, would be farther from the corners of the room. Are there any other options?

Monitors would probably be something like Epos ELS-3, Ascend CBM-170, Triangle Titus - I would need to keep monitors+stands at $500 or less for now. Also, I've had trouble locating stands for the Advents - any reasonably priced suggestions?

David
armstrod
armstrod OP
612 posts
 
Rich,

I'm already working on the stands. I agree that physics works against smaller speakers, but obviously the room is part of the physics too. Isn't that balancing act part of why we all love audio and spend so much time debating it here? :-)

One of the reasons I have wireless Ethernet in my house is so I can be listening to music while simultaneously reading and posting here...what could be better? :-)

David
phasecorrect's avatar
phasecorrect
2,013 posts
 
ALso...one has to except that truly deep bass such as the advents will not be the strenght of a small monitor...however...a small speaker will image better, have improved transparency, and can be very involving in a more "audiophile" way...vs. "visceral" bass,etc...at any rate...I would go the monitor route myself...and in my humble o...you can easily better the sound you are accustomed to...another sleeper...Monitor AUdio studio 2...about 4-$500 used...these are unreal with vocals, etc...
rockvirgo
587 posts
 
Forget monitors if you can't move them away from the walls and into the room. Their whole trick is imaging which demands away from boundry placement. Dimensionally, even happy sounding little monitors customarily make up in depth what they lack in height and width so don't expect much gain there. But if you're still dying to experience monitors check out the Epos line; they make some budget butt kickers.
armstrod OP
612 posts
 
How much room do monitors typically need? I can only get the Advents about 6 inches from the wall due to their size and my room constraints, but smaller monitors could be 12 inches or more from the walls. Would that be enough, or would monitors need more than that to function properly?
armstrod OP
612 posts
 
Okay, I got the Advents out of the corners and up on stands, and I'm beginning to remember why I fell in love with them 25 years ago. My next question is about spacing and toe-in. The only general rule I can find is that the distance from the speaker face to your ears should be 1.5 times the distance between the speaker centers. Is this a valid rule? If you have to err on one side or the other, is it better to be farther than 1.5/1 or closer? In this room I'm 8 ft (96") from the speaker faces, so theoretical ideal spacing would be 64". Due to furniture, electrical, and WAF limitations I can get them to about 70", or I can get them at about 50", with 70" being logistically preferable - that's where they are presently. Would it be worth the trouble to try them at 50"? If the crowd here has had experience to know it's not worth it, it would save me a fair amount of moving.

Additionally, I'm sure they'll need to be toed in a bit. Is the best starting point with the speaker faces perpendicular to my sitting point?

I may get this room listenable yet!
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