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speakers for a smaller listening room

I recently moved and managed to get a dedicated listening room (yay!), but its a little on the small side at 12 x11 feet. My current speakers are B&W CDM 9NT's, purchased when they were for a much larger room. Do i stand much chance of getting these to work well in a room this size? I currently have them 3 ft from the back wall, and about 2ft from the side walls, with the chair about 1ft from the back wall. The bass is pretty lumpy, and there's a lot of HF echo/clatter, i have some traps on the way to try and tame things, but are there any fundamental issues that would prevent a floor stander of that size working in such a small room? Any suggestions on position changes?

Thanks
Simon
zak42

Showing 3 responses by daverz

daverz
487 posts
 
I'd try working with these speakers a little more before giving up.

Have you tried measuring with some test tones and an SPL meter to narrow down where the frequency humps are?

You could try the trick of sitting a foot from the back wall while damping the standing wave there with 4" thick panels (say three 2'x4' panels to start). This would allow getting the speakers well out from the front wall and still allow a decent separation for soundstage width. With the speakers along the 12' wall you could have a 6' listening triangle with the speakers 4' out from the front wall and 3' from the side walls.

I suppose after that you could try EQ with 1 or more subwoofers or an outboard digital room correction box.

daverz
487 posts
 
Atsacoustics makes some very inexpensive acoustic panels. They are easy to hang since they have a wood backing and you can easily screw in brackets for wall mounting wire on the back.
daverz
487 posts
 
Yeah, you'd still need to do the first reflection points. A small mirror or even an old CD disc together with a laser pointer can be used to find it. I use Blu-Tack type putty to stick the CD on the wall. Place it on the wall where a laser beam bounces from the tweeter position to the listening position (or vice versa) and note the position with a pencil mark.
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