Try your existing Tyler loudspeakers in the new room before moving on the something else.
Recommendations for speakers in a much smaller listening room.
My wife and I are in the process of buying and moving to a new patio home. We are both pretty excited about it. The only issue is I will have a much smaller listening room. I currently have a room that is 14.5 x 38, basically one half of the basement. The new room will be 12 x 16 with 8' ceilings.(taller than pervious room at 6'8") The question is what is a good speaker for that size room that will not overload the room. I like sound stage, imaging and listenability over analytical and highly detailed. My current speakers are Tyler acoustics Woodmere II and are giant towers. I do some vinyl on a vintage Panasonic DD TT with Ortofon MC1 cart. Mostly streaming with a Lumin T2, Oppo Digital 105 for disks with a Modwright KWH 225i. Thanks for any suggestions, Allen.
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Big speakers in a small room will load the room quicker then small speakers in a small room. Loading the room means sound pressure level. See here! đ Mike |
12â x 16â x 8â is not really that small a room & with proper set up & treatment your Tylers would probably work fine..The question is do you really want to deal with a pair of 185 pound speakers in it or not.. |
@backwash is this a dedicated listening space Also your room is actually pretty good dimensions wise |
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I've found most speakers can work very well as long as the listening seat is flexible. You have to be open to moving everything around and see what sounds best. A pair of Verity Parsifal monitors would be really nice and are sometimes found without the bass/subwoofer part of the speaker for under 2k. I've owned Proac and Harbeth both nice too. The Harbeth's would bottom out when pushed, not ideal for loud listening so factor what kind of reproduction you are looking to create. |
Your new room has ample space for speakers. A friend of mine bought Wilson Puppies and then treated the room to great effect. Your room is large enough for floor standers or stand mount. If you are looking for natural and musical look for a used pair of Sonus faber Olympica 3. These will fit the room and sound great. I owned a pair for many years. All Sonus Faber are natural sounding and musical. But Dynaudio, Totem can also be good choices. The Dynaudio are more detailed and still natural, Totem are fun and natural sounding. Wilson precise... and very flexible in a small room. |
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As others mentioned itâs a decent sized room and Iâd definitely at least give the Tylerâs a try before buying something else â might surprise you and a couple bass traps may be all you need if even that. Past that, here are some available now that are musical and also excel at imaging with an expansive 3D soundstage. https://tmraudio.com/fresh-arrivals/joseph-audio-rm33si-limited-edition-floorstanding-speakers-pair/ Best of luck. |
Who knows? Thereâs literally a million speakers out there that would work well in your smaller room. Youâll probably receive about a million different speaker suggestions on this forum to confuse you even further. You already know whatâs out there. You just need to do the legwork. Your smaller room still is large enough to accommodate larger speakers like your current Tyler speakers. I bet your current Tyler speakers could be made to work beautifully in your new room. Iâd keep the incredible Tyler speakers if I were you. Happy listening. |
Yes It will be a dedicated room. I do plan to try the Tylers. Just thinking ahead if I don't like the results. I also have a pair of Yamaha NS1000M from 1978. I bought those before I ever bought a car, and a pair of Boston Acoustics A400. I was just thinking a sexy pair of smaller floor standers should be in my future. Or not, I was just wondering what folks used in that sized room and loved. I don't really plan to change anything else. At least not for a while, thanks. |
@backwash did some simulations: Simulation 12x16x8 room with speakers of F3 of 40Hz with a subwoofer crossed at 80Hz but without treatment - https://imgur.com/a/GpuEXQw and Simulation 12x16x8 room with speakers of F3 of 40Hz with a subwoofer crossed at 80Hz with considerable treatment for the Rear, Left and Right walls - https://imgur.com/a/fInWfkc Note: it is without front wall, ceiling and floor treatment factored in and is still more controlled than stock.
Buying an amp, DAC, cable won't fix this so don't make that mistake of trying to purchase yourself out of a physics problem so please don't skimp on this before your setup. You have a dedicated space so do it right the first time |
My room is almost identical in size as yours in all dimensions. I think it depends how much youâre willing to treat your room. Iâm using my room as a music/2-ch room, an Atmos home theater room (though all 9 speakers are in-wall or in-ceiling), as well as storing all my media in the room (>1000 records, similar # of CDs). So I donât have a lot of room to install treatments. Record racks, wall cabinets to store CDs, or gear furniture line most of my walls and go very near if not all the way to the corners. So big bass traps just wasnât going to happen. I just have a couple of 4x2ft acoustic panels near the first reflection point. I tried to use Aerial Acoustics Model 7Bâs which I used and loved in a bigger space - the bass was really way too much. Also tried some Monitor Audio and Sonus Faber towers and at that point they were also too much. This was all using a standard preamp and amp and trying to move my listening position forward and back to find a sweet spot. I ended up going with bookshelf speakers and 2 sealed subs to help smooth out the bass response in the room. I also moved away from a standard preamp and went with a miniDSP Flex as my preamp because it could do DSP/room EQ with its 10 bands of PEQ per channel. Now my response is quite good and everything sounds balanced in my listening spot. Had I gone with the Flex to start, perhaps I could have gotten away with staying with the Aerials - Iâll never know. Just moving to bookshelf speakers and 1 sub to start with, along with an open mind on listening position, got me to a livable state, even though it still measured not very great. It wasnât perfect, but it was fine. Because itâs my dedicated room, I did want more than fine which is why I got a second sub and went the DSP/room correction route. I think, blank slate, if you could find a way to design and treat your room acoustically so 80+% of your room issues were addressed, then you may be able to get by with just speaker setup and listening position tweaks to get to a nice outcome. But if you canât or prefer not to treat your room, my feeling is getting to a really nice outcome sonically is really difficult to do with larger speakers. With smaller speakers and a sub or two, probably doable, but just from my recent experience, either room treatments or some kind of DSP is what it would take in most situations. |
I have a set of Mirage Omniâs and although theyâre small, about 6" across x 9" deep. They are a two speaker configuration. I love them more than I thought I would. They are on my desk set up being fed by a Schitt Audio Ragnarök coming off a Vault2i. What I love most beyond the fantastic sound is the seemingly "everywhere" sound that comes from them. Good luck on your journey. OH, one more thing...These speakers where made in the mid-2000âs and to find them youâll have to go onto E-pray ooohhhh I mean E-Bay. So be careful in your purchase. Okay another thing...I do have a subwoofer in the system a Golden ear Aeon. |
You would benefit greatly by consulting an acoustician. Jeff at HDacoustics is very good and he designed my room which I built while my speakers were being built. He can design which treatments to use and precisely where to put them. He is very reasonable with his fee and there would be no months or years trying to get it right. As others have said your current speakers will probably work great. My speakers are bigger too in a room similar to yours in size. You can check out my system I have it listed. Good luck! |
I would work to get the best out of your existing speakers, and learn more about the space before changing your speakers. you will go from very early floor/ceiling reflections with very delayed and weak rear wall reflections to slightly closer sides and a ârear wallâ situation. I would start with toe-in with drivers aimed directly to the listening position, tilted back so tweeters are aimed at seated ear height (now angles to floor/ceiling/side walls dealt with), and be prepared to reduce/absorb rear wall reflections. Having tools to know what you are getting helps, buy an inexpensive SPL mic (with a bottom fitting for a tripod) and a CD (not LP) with test tones. This is an unusually low price, someone should snap this up
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VonGaylord âReturn of the Legendâ. Affordable, stunningly beautiful, incredible range for a stand mount monitor, great balance, creamy mid range, detail without sounding analytical and the sound stage is large but the speakers just completely disappear. My mains are Odeon Carnegieâs but we are talking about downsizing. My room is 33 by 18 and the first 17 feet have 23 foot ceilings so essentially no interference but that is a unique room. I have run the Von Gaylords in that room with great results but they are very much at home in a smaller room and really get into their groove in smaller spaces. The cover the spectrum from 28Hz to 25kHz. Amazing little guys. Worth a look if you decide your Tylerâs are too much. |
I do already own a SPL meter, and two sealed Rythmik F12 subs. Also own Some GIK bass traps and some side reflection panels + some home made bass traps that actually worked pretty well. I have no intentions to change my amp or DAC unless I just want to go for an upgrade at some point in the future. I am very happy with how my system sound in the current room. I am fairly sure I can tweak it into shape in the new room. I mostly was curious as to what people were happy with in a room that size just in case I wanted to try something different. Thanks, Allen. |
I'll keep i simple. You need a speaker that is pretty much full range, but small enough to be properly placed. Anything the 2X8" woofers needs to be to fat into your room. 2X6" woofers can usually be placed closer to the rear walls without getting boomy. Dual-rear ports allow 4 separate bass tuning settings: both ports open or closed, upper port closed lower port open, and vice versa. I was amazed at how much dialing in could be done that way. So, Id be looking for Monitor Audio Silver 300 S7, KEF R5.l Meta, Or a good 2.5 way 6.5" design. If your inclined to use the long wall, Maggie 1.7s could work, but they'll chew up a lot of floor space. What I would avoid is anything with too much woofer 2x8" would easily over power the room, and most mini-monitors, they are nearfield-voiced and will tend to sound too small in that room. My experience with KEF LS-50s. Loved them, except they just sounded lost and small -until I got them into a small 8x12 room, then it was "Oh ... that's what they can do." Revel, Golden Ear, and Mertin Logan have very different approaches, but have some interesting speakers in your range - I'd catch a listen to the M-L Electromotion ESL and ESL-X. Exceptional midrange and detail, might be a little bass light for some. |
