Speaker Distortion or Room Interaction ?


my floor-standing speakers are quite powerful already, and sound very clean up to a certain (fairly loud but not party-loud) volume. BUT past
that, the sound starts becoming increasingly smeared and eventually becomes harsh and unlistenable, probably due to room reflections, but i have no way of measuring speaker-distortion levels like they do in stereophile. my room does
have some reverberation issues, which i've treated with echo-busters to good effect (although the room is still far from "dead"). but this is my living room also, so i really don't want to add any more room treatments. at the same time i've been seriously looking at even bigger speakers for a few years to get more resolution, sonority, and headroom in the low bass dept. in other words, i dream of listening to large-scale works of music at more realistic volume levels with a minimum of distortion. SO, the question is, if i go ahead with an upgrade, am i going to run into the same problem, or possibly even encounter worse room interactions?
or would a larger speaker sound so much better at a more controlled/lower volume level that it would be worth it for that alone? i know what some of you are thinking- build a dedicated listening room, otherwise the dream of recreating beethoven #5 will forever elude me.
french_fries

Showing 2 responses by sogood51

What speakers and amp are you using?...are you sure it's the speakers distorting? How large is the room?

Dave
The levinson amps are very good...they are not powerhouse amps though...300 watts@4ohms. Classical music with a lot of dynamic mood swings and deep bass could cause them to clip long before the Eggleston speakers go into distortation.

You could add a sub or subs. This will make life much more easy for the Levinsons...an increase in midrange quality will also be in the results.

The Egglestons should mate very well with subs...20hz will not be a problem for the sub.

Dave