Looking for a great front ported bookshelp speaker recommendation
Hi everyone,
After about a 15 year hiatus from hifi, I'm looking to get back into it. I'm looking for a front ported bookshelf speaker. The reason is that it's going to go inside a cabinet and right against a back wall. My budget is up to $5,000 but the less, the better:) Any advice or guidance would be appreciated.
The ATC SCM19 is a sealed bookshelf design so no ports to worry about and great sounding speakers. Available here with a 30-day return policy and a 10% discount if you submit your email that would put them around $3000 so well below your budget. The SCM20 would be right at the top of your budget if you wanna go bigger. Best of luck.
My best advice would be to get the speakers the hell outta the cabinet and on proper stands because being in a cabinet is not optimal and will compromise the sound, but if you can’t you can’t I guess.
Great choice and advice by soix...don't underestimate the negative effect of the cabinet the speakers are going into...might make the more expensive model not worth it...
There are speakers that are OK to be in a cabinet, that's how they were designed. I think some Devore and Revival models but I would check with the manufacturer.
I have a pair of Jean Marie Reynaud (JMR) Trente bookshelves for my office set up and they are awesome front ported speakers, so smooth and non fatiguing and very musical. They are a French company that has been around a long time.
The Trente's I have are no longer in production, the current model which is similar is called the Lucia, I think they are under $2k, but great speakers and very well made.
I tried a few modern speakers in my office with 6-1/2" woofers, added a single sub, just enough to keep them from sounding small, but the 3 way with a 10" woofer is far better, no sub needed. Having level controls makes sense anywhere, it certainly helps with speakers in cabinets, particularly for me with one speaker nearer a side wall.
So The room is a problem, It’s extremely large. It measures something like 21 feet wide by 30 feet long with an open floorplan to the kitchen behind it and the entranceway to the side And on top of it, the ceilings are very high at like 15 feet or so
@blackiridium if you are stuck with a bookshelf cabinet for placement, dealing with resonance and sound reflection - are you able to place the speakers where the front slightly overhangs the shelf (about an inch) and angle them toward your listening position? And, if possible leaving empty space on each side of the speakers?
+1 for ATCs , @soux advice, and avoiding ported speakers in this case. I have ATC SCM7’s that sit on a dresser (decoupled by rubber/wood laminates) that sound great.
Have a close look at the new EPOS ES-7N - great small speaker designed by Karl Heinz Fink of Fink Team. Front ported and offers the ability to work in a bookshelf or close to the wall or free standing. $2195 pair.
Both have a RAAL ribbon tweeter and are front ported. The ribbon tweeter limits vertical dispersion somewhat, so standing versus sitting will vary. The Duo will likely fill the space better, but are taller, or wider depending on how you orient them.
I have very good experience with Harbeth SHL5 plus, acording to your description, I would suggest you to try polk audio back ported. I have a pair discountinued RTI A1, hang on the wall and right behind a hanged tv, very short space to the left and right, wall to the left and fire place to the right. But they still sound amazing.
This bookshelf comes with a guided port with a hanging hold, and seems polk audiohave some special research and design on the guided port. Chek out their website to see if you can find anyone meet your require
You didn’t state the interior dimensions of your cabinet. Just be sure to get the dimensions of any prospective front ported or non-ported bookshelf speakers to ensure they will fit inside your cabinet. Obviously, think about setting them on some rubber feet (at least) if not something better to isolate them from the cabinet. And if possible, keep the front baffle a bit outside of the cabinet so the edges of the cabinet don't cause acoustic diffraction. As others have suggested, in such a large room, eventually getting them on proper stands will improve everything an order of magnitude and let you position the tweeters at ear height.
I have same setup. I tried Mirages. Good. Guru's better. Linn Sara Isobarik, good as well. But the best I found and still use are Audio Note K. I have them horizontal on iso puck minis.
NHT Hifi sells their C1 and C3 acoustic suspension speakers (no ports) that are designed for book shelf and wall mount use. These speakers sound good and are reasonably priced. You might want to consider adding a subwoofer if you have to use speakers that are on the smaller end of the spectrum.
There are, of course, many great bookshelf speakers. However, some of those great speakers will never perform well in a cabinet. Some, however, do seem to excel in this suboptimal location. THAT is where you need to focus your research. I do recall reading about several speakers years ago that do exactly that. The Madisound Loki Mk3 is one such speaker. Check it out. All kind of upgrade options. Another kit they carry that might perform well in your large room and still fit on a bookshelf in their Seas A26 kit.
@blackiridiumIf you used to be an Aerial 10t owner, you need to audition the 5t. My son has a pair in a built-in wall unit with his equipment and tv. By toeing in the speakers the imaging is excellent and the sound beats the Harbeths, Spendors and similar British monitors. The ATC speakers are the only ones we auditioned that were even close. Passed on B&Ws because they were too bright. The Aerial does best with an amp with some power. Its sensitivity is only 87db and it is a 4 ohm speaker. Give it 100 watts per channel and it sounds great.
Btw, my son’s room is 25’ deep, has a high ceiling sloping down to the windows on one side and is open on the other side to the kitchen.
ATC SCM20PSL (bass seems very limited on this speaker)
I've also seen a transmission line speaker called the Kerr K300 that could work although it's a bit outside of budget and there doesn't appear to be too much information on this speaker.
The basic issue is that most speakers are not designed to load into an acoustic half-space and that creates a rise in low and mid-bass most will perceive as thickness or muddiness. Proximity to the rear wall also reduces reflection time from the back wall which tends to reduce the sense of spaciousness and depth of the stereo image, AKA soundstage. The original Boston Acoustics A-100, a notably flat and wide speaker, was designed to be placed against the back wall, and used that to good effect. Predictably, they sounded thin - lacking in bass - when pulled away from the wall. Many speakers use rear ports to augment low bass, leveraging the proximity. Similarly, their rear-ported bookshelf speakers only need an inch or so of clearance function as designed.
The other issue is room size. Most bookshelf speakers will have a peak output of around 106-108dB @ 1w/1m. That sounds like a lot until the inverse square law kicks in and output drops 6dB every time the distance doubles. So, at 4M (13 ft) their max loudness is 96 dB, and max average level (general rule of thumb) is 12dB below that or 84dB. Not very loud. Somehow you need to find at least 6dB of peak output or 114dB to really work in your room. All that points to JBL and the 4329P powered 8". It meets the size, placement, and out requirements for your room better than anything else available and if you haven't heard JBLs in awhile, these are not the boom/shriek JBLs of old. Checkout the reviews.
Looking for a great front ported bookshelp speaker recommendation
The Wharfedale Elysian 1 would be a good bookshelp speaker for you at right under 5k.
This bookshelp doesn’t have a conventional front port where it is quite easy to heart port noise, etc... but, has some fairly involved engineering to deliver you a different type of base slot.
You can put this bookshelp right against a backwall, in a cabinet, etc..do all kinds of funky things you wanna do with it and hope for the best.
Hello blackiridium! Whatever you wind up with, pad the empty space around the speakers with blankets, towels, old sweaters - whatever, to kill resonances in the space between the speaker and the space in which they sit. If the front baffle of the actual speaker cabinet is not padded, cut up and old towel or get some felt or feece or something to stop sound from moving across the front of the cabinet (under the grille) and jumping off the edges of the "box." In the "old days" most companies paddded their front baffles. Happy listening!
Aerial 5T. It's a great speaker in your price range. I own a pair and have the same issue with using them in a bookshelf arrangement. They sound awesome!
Don't think front-ported speakers or speakers without rear ports can be generally placed directly against or near a front wall. These speakers need room to breathe. However, there are high-quality speakers specifically designed to be positioned close to or against a front wall, such as the D&D 8c.
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