PERFECT 10w x 18d x 9h room, any good?


OK.....long story short, i finally got my spare room in the basement back......so i have a PERFECT 10w x 18d x 9h rectangle room.

what do you guys think of turning this into a critical 2chl room...without treatment? I have the current system in in open spaced living room right now. The sound is fine, but the TV is also in that room, and i rarely have a chance to listen to my system. So before i move it downstairs, i want to know if it is worth it. Thanks in advance!

My gear:

ATC SCM20 Monitors
Onix UFW-12 Subwoofer
Kavent S-11 Tube Preamplifier (Rebadged Vincent SA-T1)
Kavent P-2200 Class A Monoblocks (Rebadged Vincent SP-991)
Shengya CD-S10CS Tube CD Player (Rebadged Vincent CD-S6MK)
kinn
It could work well in a near(er)field listening set up, but you will either need domestic furnishings or acoustic treatments, or a combo of both, to control reflections, especially off the side walls and floor.

Not perfect dimensions, but it will work fairly well firing down the lenght of the room. You will have enuf length to get the speakers well out from the front wall and the chair away from the back wall. Lots of toe in, if possible, will help eliminate some 1st reflections issuse, but you'd still need some help. You will also need carpet or something on the floor. All boils down to how good you want it to be.
10 w? Not nearly perfect as that will place any speakers too close to boundaries regardless... However if you are thinking the ratio is perfect due to 10 wide 18 deep well than thats possible... But again you will have very limited width to get those speakers breathing. You will need some extensive room acoustics most likely, including some way to especially control the immediate reflection points on the right and left walls to the speakers, along with probably some good diffusion to spread that sound out cramped in the very narrow 10 feet wide space..

I would almost suggest running the system on the long wall instead however your seated position would be way too close that way as well. I have in the past seen and heard systems jammed into a 12 foot wide area and it was about the limit I could see fitting some kinda soundstage with acoustic treatments into the room.. And even then you almost end up with system that can be pretty flat without a lot of 3d and pretty high amounts of distortions coming off those sidewallsÂ…

I consider for most speakers big or small a room of minimum 14 wide, but preferably somewhere in the 16 to 17 feet wide, and 20 to 30 deep. But we all have to work with what we have!!

By the way I had a fully Pro treated room that was 13 wide by 18 deep, it was pretty good with treatments, and just horrible without, The smaller the space the more acoustic treatments it almost needed to get things clearly in control. Right now I have the same setup however in a room that has my speakers minimum 8 feet off the sidewalls so its about 21 feet wide.. WOW what a difference, and it outperformed the thousands invested in the smaller room acoustics right off the bat, so don't minimize the effect your 10 feet wide area will ultimately have on the performance, however its better than nothing.
wow, thanks newbee and undertow...

i was thinking the same thing too. The soundstage would collapse in there....

However, i did a quick research and found the "golden ratio" from Cardas Audio. http://www.cardas.com/content.php?area=insights&content_id=26&pagestring

I was thinking about trying this...Do you have any opinions on it? It seems that i would have around 4-5feet breathing space between the ATC speakers and have a fairly good depth.
Here is a set up to try in a narrow room and has allowed me to maintain some spread between the speakers and far enuf away from the listening chair. It should give you a reasonable sound stage.

Set you speakers out into the room so the fronts are about 5 feet from the back wall.
Move your speakers so that the center of the speaker is one and a half feet from the side wall (closer than most anyone ever recommends) so you have a full 7 feet between the speakers.
Move your listening chair until your heads position is 5 feet into the room.
Now toe your speaker in to a point where the axis crosses in front of your chair (2 to 3 feet in front of your head). This will substantially reduce the 1st reflections from the side wall.

If you find that at all sonically decent, you can fine tune the highs, first by putting some deadening materiels on the walls to reduce first reflections. Then you can fine tune the speakers by small incremental movements of the speakers and listening chair forward and backwards until the bass is smooth and the highs are clear. Play with toe in all the time.

Hope that helps a bit.

BTW, I started out using the Cardas System, but it was just a starting point. The trick is in getting a nearly equallateral triangle set up in YOUR room to work. You need to keep an open mind/ears because they are just general guideline. And, most importantly, I tuned my set up over many months making small movements and having long listening sessions. You can't get this done well just on one rainy afternoon. :-)