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I have a 14'6" x 17'5" x 9' room. Would this be too small for a pair of full range speakers like the Thiel 7.2 or Wilson WATT 7.0? It is on the second floor and is rectangular. I also plan on installing some acoustic panels to treat the room. Thanks for any help.
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Thank you all for your kind thoughts. I will keep them in mind when I go and audition any new speakers.
Hey again Listener.
Good luck with your listening and potential shopping.
Drop us a line or two about what you hear and your impressions.
Best wishes for the comming week-end.
Klaus.
Think of the room as a giant horn/tube resonator that acts at bass frequencies. The room can add a great deal of gain to a speakers' bass response. So, speakers that measure flat in the bass in an anechoic chamber will show dramatic peaks and dips due to room boundary effects. The additional gain can set off boomy sounding room harmonics (adding further large peaks and nulls). Speakers which measure flat in an anechoic chamber can set off a cascade reaction in a highly echoic space like a typical small room leading to boomy, out-of control bass.The most practical way to control these problems is to taper the bass off with decreasing frequency, so that the room adds just enough gain to achieve deep but flat response without getting out of control. The speaker's bass curve must be carefully matched to a room of a specific size. Large, full-range speakers often need large rooms to achieve this delicate balancing act unless the designer has aggressively damped the bass end of the speaker.
I have Hales Revelation 3's that I just moved from a large room to a small room. I know that these do not qualify as very large speakers, but they are full range. I was suprised at how good they sounded in the small room. To me, they are just a pair of mini monitors with a 4 inch mid and a 1 inch tweeter - they just happen to have a pair of 10 inch subs included.I could see dipoles not working so well since they need room to breathe. I could also see designs like the big Dunlavy's overloading the room with upper and lower woofers.
Hey Listening.
It is rather difficult to make any comment out of the room size alone.
But let me try to make some comments anyway. I believe the thiels might be on the ever so big side, but really can not se that much of aproblem with the Wilsons.
If you feel that the room has a bass problem of some sort, i would put three loudspeakers forward, in your pricerange.
No. 1: Avalon Opus Ceramique, which is a version of the Opus, made specificly, for smaller rooms. I have never heard this design, but somehow feels sure thaat it is rather good (allright you can call me naive
No. 2: Gryphon Cantata. A two way design with a sub 0.5 bass Q, and a room gain and Q control unit. This loudspeaker can with 100% security be given the right owerall bass balance, and at the same time bass depth in your room. The only problem might be the total output level, but in all honesty i belive it to be sufficient to say 95% of us hi-fi buffs. It only uses two 5 inch drivers in closed chambers, but it makes splendid use of these, because its 57 hz cutoff frequency with a very low and slight active gain, can be matched to the listening romms, room gain. And thereby go down in room, and without boom, into the 20-30 hertz region. I have heard these speakers in much bigger rooms than yours or mine. And belive me they are nice.
No. 3: The 3 loudspeaker is really not a speaker, but an option of using high quality midi monitors like my Sonus Faber Guarneri Homage, or Avalons comming two way studio monitor, and the combining them with a very high Quality sub-woofer. This would give you the advantage of having rather good loudspeakers, with the freedom of adjusting the bass level for your taste.
Before i leave and say goodby for this time, i would like you to consider yet another option. The option of buing electrostics! If you have a dedicated listening room, wouldnt it be nice to have say a pair of Soundlab M3 toroid( they have casters and can be rolled flat aginst the wall when they are not in use!!). Oh dear i would like to have the option to hear speakers like that, sadly this is very difficult here in good old Denmark. But if you have the chance, why not grab it, and give them a listen??
I wish my reply have been constructive, and hope for the best possible outcome of your search, for your next speakers.
Klaus.
If you have flexibility in setting up the room to your liking, you can get excellent sound from the speakers you mention. Sure they'd like a bigger room, but so would most large speakers. The goal isn't to get the speaker whose capability is max'd out in your room - the goal is to get the speaker that will sound the best in your room, even if it has the potential to sound better in a bigger room.Consider, by way of example, a grand piano. Sure, maybe it sounds best in a medium-sized jazz club or recital hall. But it would still sound better than a little upright piano in your 14 X 17 room!
As long as you can follow a few basic rules of speaker set-up to get smooth bass and eliminate strong, distinct early reflections (preferably with diffusion rather than absorption), I think you can pretty much pick whatever speakers make the magic happen for you.
Best of luck with your quest!
I'd recomend you listen to the Green Mountian Audio Europa's. They stand just 20" high and 8" deep, but sound better than the top of the line Paradigms @ $3k and smoked my ADS L-1290's BAD! They are made of cast marble so there are NO cabinet resonances at all. I bought a pair of Europa's. The companies president, Roy Johnson is a great guy and very knowedgable. Reach him at gma@pcisys.net
Not sure about the Thiel's, but the Wilsons need a MUCH bigger room than that in my listening experience. Best room I have heard them in is probably at least 20 x 25.IMO most people stuff speakers that are too big into rooms that are too small... Bigger is not always necessarily better. Bass gets all muddy, and the soundstaging diminishes to 2d if you "overspeaker" your room.
personally I'd go with a size smaller Thiels, but based on what I have seen elsewhere in AA, I'd say I am in the minority.
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