Good Used Speakers ($8K-10K) For A Little Listening Room

Moto man, I was giving this some thouught. You have a difficult situation.

Too much bass and you get boom, not enough and the sound is thin.

You have an excellent amp,  so how about this idea:

A set of Legacy Audio Calibres with active bass and a Wavelet processor.

The speakers would cost $6,200.00 with the built in bass amp and the Wavelet is $5,000.00 for a combined price of $11,200.00 brand new.

Now you get a superb small monitor with active bass,  and you get a new preamp, dac, and room correcton processor as part of the package.

With this combination the processor can remove boomy bass and you can adjust the sound to deliver the sonic flavor you wish. 

So unless you move into something like this you will always be at the mercy of the room, with room correction you can acoustically take the room's limitions out of the equation and the Calibres offer outstanding sonics with deep enough bass to be satisfying without having to use some kind of woofer/sat combo. 

Just a thought.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Tomcarr, by the time you are finished with room treatment and bass traps you are going to blow a lot of funds.

The biggest issue with a small room is not first order reflections but bass boom. as the room being a perfect square will cause serious loading in the bass the OP may have furniture in the room which removes reflections naturally or perhpas not. 

If the room has slap echo that will have to addressed, belive it or not large throw pillows pilled up can work wonders with this for very low cost.

Not saying that acoustic treaments are not warranted but bass traps take up a lot of space and are expensive, hence our idea of using active room correction to remove the peaks in the bass without having to resort to taking up space with passive bass traps.

Active room correction is the answer. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Have to agree with Geof.

We are not saying not to use acoustical passive tuning 3 out of our 4 soundrooms do use some kinds of treatment however, our last 2 rooms at the New York audio show sounded fantastic and used 0 bass traps.

The active room correcton employed today by Anthem was designed to deliver flat bass reponse regardless of the room

We had thunderous deep tight bass in a ordinary hotel room 16 by 14 and the Persona 9H are rated flat to 17hz.

We looked at room plots before and after rooom correction and it was not subtle.

In the Legacy room Aeris produced clean tight bass in the same size room.

The Boehmer room correction is extremely advanced 0 bass traps in that room as well.

The Calibre with Wavlet provides a complete solution and would make an excellent starting point you can allways add bass traps and the amount of bass is tuneable.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Headphonedreams,

So far we haven't been super impressed by the KII,s they sounded like a good monitor, they didn't sound really big, soundstage was good, but not blown away.

We can easily get them, Sound Org is their distributor, and we get Rega from them.

Unless we hear them sound better so far heard them at two Audio Shows and each time not blown away I doubt we will venture down that path.

I would take an Active set of ACT SCM 40 or the Calibre with the Wavlet.

Actually we were not interested in flooring the Calibres, at $5,500 plus stands you are in spitting territory of the full range Legacy Signture at $7k.

We just heard this combo at the last New York Audio show and the Cailbres were amazing. Perfect high performance monitor. Just add an Amp for the midrange woofer and tweeter and off you go.

Legacy was showing Active Calibres, active was in the bass, the rest of the speaker was passive.  They sounded freaking huge. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Moto Man,

Here is how we would recommend that you handle the project.

1: Go to visit as many audio dealers and or shows you can

2: Make a list of products that intrigue you.

3: Evaulate in your room if possible.

4: Purchase and set up

5: Then once the speaker is in your room then consider room treatment if necessary.

Ask yourself how does the system sound now.

If your room has slap echo you can deal with that by using panels, rugs, pillows, furniture, wall hangings depending on budget.

Bass boom is best hadled by electronic room correction and if necessary tube traps.

You should look for monitor speakers with bass down to the 40hz level but nothing which goes way deeper than that.

We would urge you to consider the Legacy Calibre/Wavlet combo because the speakers sound amazing, they have good but not crazy deep bass, you can get the powered bass version and with a wavelet and be able to tune out some issues with a small room, and you are getting a very good preamp, dac, and room correction processor as part of the package. 

We heard them for the first time at the New York audio show and they were amazing  also with the Wavelet you can adjust the final sound and can equilize the sound to match your ear as well by modifying even the corrected response. 

I would look at: Focal Sopra 1,  ATC SCM 40, obviously the Joseph Audio Pulsar, KEF Ref 1, Harbeth 30.1. Paradigm Person B, and see which of these compact Reference speakers will work for you,. just remember a passive speaker means  you will be more at the mercy of the room, with an active room correction system you have a start to work with the room.

Axpona is comming up maybe you should see if you can go.

If not do you ever get to the New York City area for business?

If so you can visit this part of the country and hear almost every major speaker system out there as a possiblity.

Good luck and enjoy the ride.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ