Too small. With the 1.7i you really need at least 4-5’ of space behind them to enable them to breathe, otherwise they will not image well and will sound congested.
Is 12'x12' too small for Magnepan 1.7's?
We recently moved and I had to downsize my listening area. My previous area (man cave/basement) was roughly 18'x20', generously sized and great for listening.
The new home has two potential listening rooms and I'm currently trying out the smaller of the two. It measures roughly 12'x12' and as currently set up, with speakers away from the corners, it seems really tight. It sounds rather good but i don't feel I'm getting the full range that my speakers offered previously. I still haven't moved the subwoofer down which may have something to do with the overall effect. I'm hesitant to move it's 50 lb weight down a long flight of stairs in case I decide to move everything upstairs to a larger, general use room.
The larger, upstairs room is 22'x16' but I'll be sharing space with a lot of stuff unrelated to music listening. I'm leaning toward moving the system upstairs, assuming all the addiitional space will be the charm in the equation but I'm curious if anyone has tried such a large speaker in such a small room?