room space


I have a living room in apartment with listening space of 4m (from listening coach to front wall where speaker stands) x 6m wide with the height of 3m.  I am planning to purchase a 2nd hand Dynaudio Contour 3.3. But I am afraid that such kind of not so large space, the bass might cause standing waves which make bass unclear or vibrating the floor which cause down floor inhabitants complain.  Do you have any idea for my condition? Or should  I buy a smaller one such as Contour 1.8 MK II? Tks. in advance.  
faust168

Showing 5 responses by mgreen27

You may want to pick a different brand. Dynaudio has always had some issues with bass. Every time I've set them up, I always got that one note type of bass. Some people refer to it as a "hump" in the bass. If I had to choose between the 2, I would get the 3.3 over the 1.8.

If you're open to different brands, a pair of Vandersteen Model 2 or 3's would be ideal. The quality of bass if excellent, and they give a lot of placement and correction options. But I'm guessing you live somewhere in Europe so you may not have access to Vandersteen. JM Labs, Audio Physic and Monitor Audio are brands that you probably have access to and you'll have a much easier time getting the bass right.

"Maybe you should consider 2 or 2.5 way speakers to reduce potential overhang bass."

How do you come up with that? Unless you are referring to a specific speaker? A well designed 3 or 4 way speaker can easily deal with bass issues that a typical 2 or 2.5 way can't. The overall design is far more important than generic features.

"We have Focal here which might be the another sister brand of JM Labs. The new Focal costs a lot for the high End models. In now days, you can't image why the hi-end is so expensive."

I think Focal is the right name. It used to be JM Labs made the finished speakers you go buy in an audio store and Focal just made raw drivers. I believe the 2 companies merged and they now call everything Focal. In the US they have some very expensive speakers, but they also have models that are very reasonable, and you can often find them on sale and get even better prices. But if you don't have any of these brands available to you, try the Dynaudio as long as you can sell them and not lose much money if they don't work. I would get the bigger of the 2 pairs (the 3.3's). You're less likely to have an issue with them. 

There's a big difference between reading about something in a magazine or sales brochure (white paper) and doing it for real. 

"Whitepapers are not sales brochures. They are written by the technical/engineering groups, not the sales and marketing groups."

Pure BS. I have yet to see otherwise. The marketing department gets their hands on everything that comes into contact with the customer. What's the first thing you see on the "white papers" you reference? All the different logo's of brands owned by Harmon, oversized and highlighted in a big box. Its not necessary because the "scientist" clearly identifies who he is and who he works for.

Regardless of all that Bob, we're stopping this right here. I've read several of your posts and I've seen nothing written by you that can even remotely help someone looking for advice. You're the guy that read a bunch of crap and now you're an expert. You go around making definitive statements about components you've never seen or heard. Audio doesn't work like that. If you want people to take you seriously, stop talking and start learning.

You'll no doubt pretend you have no idea what I'm talking about, so I'll do this 1 time, and that's it. 

"Assuming you listen to music that covers the entire audio band and you want to hear the entire audio band, then there will be room effects in the lower midrange and bass regions."

You can't know that unless you have complete knowledge of the room and system. For all you know the bass may be fine and the treble could be off.

"Sure, you can pick speakers that drop off that region of the audio band, but then you miss the foundation of music."

Same answer as before. Without further info its just a random comment.

"Rather than spending so much money on larger main speakers, reallocate the funds to include smaller main speakers and one or two subwoofers. You'll end up with a full range speaker system and the potential for a smoother bass response."

Once again, nothing can be done without a lot more info. These products are not generic and 2 speakers of the same size may preform completely different from each other.

"Keep this in mind as well... We place main speakers in a room for their imaging and sound staging effects. It's unlikely that such locations will also yield the best bass response. That's why some main speakers employ builtin parametric equalizers, .e.g, Vandersteen Model 5."

WE do nothing of the sort. That may apply to you, but I guarantee I set speakers up very different from what you do.