Are Your Speakers Too Big Or Too Small For Your Room?

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
I made the mistake of buying floorstanders for a smaller room when I first got into home theater. Well, bigger isn’t always better. My experience is that you’re better off with smaller speakers like bookshelves for smaller rooms, which arguably image better, and leave the lower bass to the subwoofer, which gives you more options in terms of placement.

The lesson here is that speakers only achieve their full potential in rooms with acoustics that complement the speakers. It's something of an oversimplification, but big speakers usually only sound best in large rooms, and small speakers in tiny rooms.
 
I hardly notice the children sized towers and the center half as big as my fireplace anymore! Right up until someone new walks in my living room... But dear lord do they fill up that open ass room with sound!
 
You make a good point.
Bear in mind that some speakers are designed to be placed near walls, others need to be further into the room.
To get the deepest bass you need a subwoofer anyway, hardly any speakers can get near 20Hz.

My speakers are medium huge, specced to 22Hz, but my room lets bass of 20 to 30Hz out through the walls rather than reflecting it inside so they are only decent down to about 25Hz here.
I lowered the upper cutoff of my sub to 25Hz to match and use it to get down to 16Hz ish.
My sub is spiked onto a large wooden breadboard as this tightened the bass up dramatically, removing a fair bit of boom/woolliness.
The result is pretty impressive.


It can take a bit of effort to get the best out of some rooms.
 
It can take a bit of effort to get the best out of some rooms.

QFT, Generally the bigger the space the more air you have to move to get the sound across it effectively. But, some speakers are better at it than others, and some sound terrible doing it lol. Also another trick to "enhancing" the sound of a room is to put as much sound absorbing material on the walls and floor as possible. Carpet, tapestries, soft artwork, all helps cut down on "echo" off the walls and floor. My living room has quite a bit of sound reflective surface. I actually point some speakers towards the wall so the echo gives the illusion of a wider sound stage. Not ideal, but I have other things to consider.
 
I was testing some small speakers a few years ago, the Klipsch 2.1, some Paradigm's, and a pair of JBL's.
klipsch.jpg
 
What a bullshit article.. it's not that the speakers are bad for the "room", it's that the room is bad for the speakers. Placement is key, along with having absorption / traps if needed, as well as proper setup. I've gone through a ton of room sweeps with roomeqwizard software and a mic to determine the best placement in my room, and you would be absolutely amazed at what small movements in placement will do to the sound.

that said, if you want big sound, you need big speakers. There's no cheating the laws of physics. Small speakers can sound good, but they just don't fill a room. My ht setup consists of large klipsch floor towers as well as multiple 18" subwoofers in very large ported enclosures
 
there is a LOT more to speakers than their size...
 
Oh absolutely, I was just referring to instances when people talk about those shitty bose micro cube systems with 2" speakers and think they make a room explode with sound
 
wasn't directed at you, just at the ridiculous article
 
So much more plays into sound than just speaker size or even sound traps.

Best source I've ever found about sound is Siegfried Linkwitz.
 
Controlled directivity is almost magical when dealing with small echoing rooms.
 
Putting flood standing Tannoy M4s in a small room was a complete waste and the listening experience had only became bearable when I moved the back of the cabinet about half a meter or more from the back wall, at a modest angle (5 deg?) and placing a carpet on the adjacent wall.
Too close to the wall - boomy, no stereo scene.
Too far - all stereo and no punch.
If you have a small room forget about large floor standing monsters.
 
speaking of speakers, when will those omni directional speakers go mainstream or at least be affordable?
 
Meh go big or go home.

My Polk 7.2 setup sounds great, my Logitech 5.1 now in storage

RTI 12 Front Tower
CSi5 Center
FXI A6 (6 Units) SB, SR & FH
PSW 505 Sub x2
Emotiva XPA 2 Amp

3200Watts Max~

Lets just say you can feel the games :eek:. I know the towers would sound even better in a larger room, and I will move them to one if I ever get my one place. They still sound great as is.
 
When you have the space, why not :D

Great amp btw, I use one to power my fronts. 300W RMS/ch min into 8 ohm and quality to boot.
I tried to buy the XPR-5 but they wont ship the XPRs outside the US.
Sad :(
 
When you have the space, why not :D

Great amp btw, I use one to power my fronts. 300W RMS/ch min into 8 ohm and quality to boot.
I tried to buy the XPR-5 but they wont ship the XPRs outside the US.
Sad :(

They are great but so dang heavy! Worried if I dropped it, the thing might fall through the floor and continue to the center of the earth!

Would have loved the XPR but just to expensive for my budget. Maybe in the future, the power hungry RTI12s would love it.
 
speaking of speakers, when will those omni directional speakers go mainstream or at least be affordable?

Omni-directional is the worst thing you can do in a small room with hard surfaces. You want to eliminate surface reflections, not increase them.
 
They are great but so dang heavy! Worried if I dropped it, the thing might fall through the floor and continue to the center of the earth!

Would have loved the XPR but just to expensive for my budget. Maybe in the future, the power hungry RTI12s would love it.

You arent wrong, they caused me to get a bit fitter when I hurt my back taking them to my brothers for a demo (XPA-2 and XPA-3). They need 2 people to carry due to the forward loading of the spine.
Wasnt looking forward to the journey home again!
They havent been demo'd away from home since.

I havent seen my XPA-2 hit the red line yet despite feeding LFE to both fronts and pushing it hard!
The speakers can take 1KW RMS each. I cant lol.
I'd like the XPR for stronger dynamics, higher quality and it uses a lot less electricity (helps offset the cost if you leave your amps on a lot).
I'll never be able to push it near its max.
 
Your sound setup is not good enough until it can get loud enough to make small children cry. :D

In my current setup, I am using a 3.1? setup. two speakers + center + sub
because there is currently nowhere to put the rear channel speakers.

And my setup has a setting to virtualize the rear speakers... not that it works entirely, but it does sound better than having it set to 5.1 with the rear speakers missing.

Works for now and is way better than just having two speakers.

There is also a lot more to size in the speaker world as well.
 
I usually use a pair of headphones. Like I have a logitech pair that I got from an office supply store for $14 that are comfy. My netbook's speakers can get loud enough to hear on the other side of my living room without getting all distort-y or anything so I'm gonna say that two speakers that are each about the size of a dime are good enough for a decent sized room. Anything bigger gets sort of wasteful of space, resources, power, and so on. It's just excess that didn't need to have energy invested in manufacture or whatever to begin with.
 
Still like my old school Realistic MACH TWO speakers with the 15" woofers.
 
My SEOS-12 TD12M speakers.

DSC_0228.jpg


20130517_103006.jpg


I built an ottoman sub with a 21" sub on the bottom.
IMG_0361.jpg


In addition I have 2 dual opposed 15" subs up front.

Very gratifying to build your own speakers.

Cheers!

Peter
 
living room (thats a 65" TV for reference)

77591_10151125906042404_1767682028_o.jpg


bedroom (52" tv for reference)

11103056_10152813679102404_5378689852162404112_o.jpg

It looks great, but what is up with that first equipment rack? All that goodness and then that ugly ass fucking rack. ;) :p
 
hah ya that actually went away, don't have a picture of the whole setup but everything is in a pair of racks now off to the left

1077151_10151578028332404_95943287_o.jpg
 
My Infinity RS IIIb's sound amazing in any room, Stop buying shitty speakers. :D
 
Meh go big or go home.

My Polk 7.2 setup sounds great, my Logitech 5.1 now in storage

RTI 12 Front Tower
CSi5 Center
FXI A6 (6 Units) SB, SR & FH
PSW 505 Sub x2
Emotiva XPA 2 Amp

3200Watts Max~

Lets just say you can feel the games :eek:. I know the towers would sound even better in a larger room, and I will move them to one if I ever get my one place. They still sound great as is.

I'd think what would really make them sound better would be if they were pointed somewhere in your direction, and not straight past you when you're seated at the desk as they appear to be.
 
Some of you guys would benefit from actually stepping down a size.

A speaker column is supposed to be far enough to let the individual drivers' sound blend together. See coaxial speakers for an explanation.

You can put the largest, most powerful driver with a paper membrane and all and it will sound absolutely horrible. Put the same speakers in a room with a stone floor instead of wood - suddenly the bass feels tighter. Move the speaker cabinets away from the walls - the 'boom' is lessened but you can literally pinpoint the individual instruments.

For all you with large speakers in small rooms - try tilting them slightly using some solid feet to lift the front of the cabinet like an inch upwards. You might find that you no longer have a standing wave of boomy bass in the back of your room and instead it becomes more unfiorm.

If you have a rear-firing bass reflex tube, you almost need to move them far away from the back wall. A 60 hz wave (bass) is a pressure disturbance about 5 metres long!
 
Flecom, I see you have some heavy gear placed on top of your speaker cabinet.
Have you tried not doing that? Because, I'd assume, the cabinet's vibrations are probably no good for the receiver/amp's performance. Also, having the speaker's magnet so close to the amp's power supply could be detrimental, too.
I mean, I'm not saying I'm 100% right, just curious.
 
Built some 4' 4 ways recently. 3 upper drivers, crossed at 800 and 3000hz passively, and a separate set (BI amped) of ported 12" subs tuned to 23hz in 3 cuft bottom cab sections. I have a small, but long apartment, so it's nice to have long throw woofers. Both amped sections are seen as 4ohms, as the dual 4 ohm woofers are wired in series-parallel, and the 3 drivers are also 4 ohms. They draw around 80wrms for the uppers and another 160w for the subs, paired. They're highly efficient hitting around 95db 1wm at 1000hz and 100db at 10wm at 30hz.

Currently using a low noise 14v switching supply with a bunch of filtering caps and a low pass filter set to relay under 30khz (cuts the smps switching frequency of around 67khz and it's lower first harmonic dramatically, although I heard neither, the amt tweeters were playing said harmonic as noticed by dogs and my wattage check resistor).

They sound great. Can't wait to move them to a room that's not 20 ft long and 10ft wide. It is fun measuring real wavelength peaks and troughs of bass by walking around, though.
 
This thread is like show and tell for speakers. I seriously should take a pic of the underside of my netbook and post it so I can brag about my sound quality too. :D
 
This thread is like show and tell for speakers. I seriously should take a pic of the underside of my netbook and post it so I can brag about my sound quality too. :D

OCP stands for Overclockers Comparision Page. Whip it out and post it :D whip out a camera I mean :D

Obviously, hence the :D
I kinda felt you were " :D ", hence the Big Lebowski quote. :D

Built some 4' 4 ways recently. 3 upper drivers, crossed at 800 and 3000hz passively, and a separate set (BI amped) of ported 12" subs tuned to 23hz in 3 cuft bottom cab sections. I have a small, but long apartment, so it's nice to have long throw woofers. Both amped sections are seen as 4ohms, as the dual 4 ohm woofers are wired in series-parallel, and the 3 drivers are also 4 ohms. They draw around 80wrms for the uppers and another 160w for the subs, paired. They're highly efficient hitting around 95db 1wm at 1000hz and 100db at 10wm at 30hz.

Currently using a low noise 14v switching supply with a bunch of filtering caps and a low pass filter set to relay under 30khz (cuts the smps switching frequency of around 67khz and it's lower first harmonic dramatically, although I heard neither, the amt tweeters were playing said harmonic as noticed by dogs and my wattage check resistor).

They sound great. Can't wait to move them to a room that's not 20 ft long and 10ft wide. It is fun measuring real wavelength peaks and troughs of bass by walking around, though.

Adopt me.
 
Seems like a good opportunity to show some speaker pr0n. I'm all for small bookshelf speakers for my computer. I outgrew my desire for Stonehenge sized speakers after I bought my first condo. I was politely informed that causing earthquake-style rumblings that could be felt on the 16th and 17th floors was not the best way to maintain good relations with my new neighbors. :p

My little set up:



Pair of PSB Imagine XB bookshelf speakers
SVS SB-2000 subwoofer
Emotiva XDA-2 dac & UPA-200 amp
 
I need larger speakers. I'm using some older Polk bookshelf speakers right now. I was going to buy some Axiom speakers all around, but I am thinking of building my own (and working on my finishing skills and not using bare MDF as a decor!). Built my own 15" sub, which sounds great, but the front stage doesn't sound that great. It's loud, but it's definitely missing a lot.
 
My little set up:


Pair of PSB Imagine XB bookshelf speakers
SVS SB-2000 subwoofer
Emotiva XDA-2 dac & UPA-200 amp

I'm digging these bookshelves. Are those kevlar membranes (yellow ones)? I was under the impression kevlar was superior to polypropylene, but how does it fare against paper?
Is it even a thing anymore?
 
I'm digging these bookshelves. Are those kevlar membranes (yellow ones)? I was under the impression kevlar was superior to polypropylene, but how does it fare against paper?
Is it even a thing anymore?
Directly from the spec sheet:

5 1/4” (133mm)
Injection Molded Clay/Ceramic
Reinforced Polypropylene Cone
Rubber Surround
Dual Magnet

I have no idea what all that means, but the sound is sublime. :)
 
Back
Top