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Can speakers be too large for a room

The reason I ask this question is I recently moved from a 10 ft x 10 ft home office/listening room with a nearfield setup (B & W CM1 and a CM sub with a Bryston B100SST intergrated amp) Which sounded wonderful to a 11 ft x 18 ft office/soundproof listening room. So I purchased a pr. of Sofia's from audiogon. Although they sound very good. They seem to want more. It's hard to explain. I'm kinda new at the highend music. My new office is built for listening. I have lots of bass traps and reflection panel to help tame the small room. So accoustics are not a real problem. The sound seems to be a little restricted. The amp pushes 200 wpc @ 4 ohm. There is no way to turn the volume past halfway, but the speaker don't really start sounding there best until you turn up the volume. Which gets a little fatiguing after a while. I know these are not technical terms, but i don't know how to explain it.

My question is could the sofias be to much for the room.

If so what would be a good choice for a replacement. I mostly listen to jazz and blues with a little classic rock.

Price range 6k to 10k

Thx Matt
mwilliams
mwilliams OP
47 posts
 
xti16

Power doesn't seem to be a problem. I cannot turn my volume past 12 o'clock or my ears will burst. the B100 handles the speakers very well.
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
11x18 is on the small side for Sofias, but I think it should work. From your description, it sound like your room is pretty heavily damped, so that may be part of why you have to goose the volume for the Sofias to come alive. Maybe you need to pull out some damping and see if it energizes the room more at a lower volume level.

Here's another thing to consider: tube amps seem to have an easier time at resolving minute changes of amplitude and low level detail. I suspect your speakers would come alive more at lower volumes with a high quality, high powered tube amp, such as from VTL or Audio Research Corporation (ARC). The best setups I've ever heard were Wilsons powered by VTL or ARC.
cincy_bob
270 posts
 
Matt, if the problems you are hearing are a function of your room treatments, the first reflection panels are the most likely culprit. It is very easy to overdampen the midrange and high frequency sound in a listening room. Most rooms use a combination of diffusion and absorption in order to effectively deal with first reflections without sucking the life out of the music.

If you find that the sound gets better as you remove the first reflection panels, you might experiment with diffusion as an alternative to the absorptive panels that were removed.
mwilliams OP
47 posts
 
Cincy_bob
I removed the walls panel and it did help, but it still needs something at the reflection points. I guess diffusors are my next option.
Do you have any recommendation on diffusors. I built my absorption panels myself, but i think the diffusor is out of my leaque to build. They also seem to be pretty exspenive.

Johnnyb

I thought about tubes a while back. My B100 can serve as a pre amp easily with a switch, but the heat and maintenance is more than i want to deal with. I do construction on some recording studio's where i live and the sound engineers all say to go tube. they also say to leave them on 24/7 so they do not need to warm up when your ready to use them.That's a lot of wasted energy,to much heat for such a small room and to much wear on the tube. The studio's have unlimited funds. I don't.
dlcockrum's avatar
dlcockrum
2,190 posts
 
Now that you have eliminated the absorption at the reflection points to positive effect, it would be prudent to try an amplifier with about twice the power of your integrated, say 250w/ch into 8 ohms and then doubles down (doubles the power output as impedance halves). It will probably wake up the Sophias nicely.
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