The best speaker for a small room...at any price point.

I have the Pulsar 2 Graphenes in a small 11.5 x 12 room. Can't say I would recommend

You can try AUDIO NOTE Speakers. They are meant to be placed Toed In from the corners of the back wall. They range in price from 3K - 30K (The affordable ones) and come in up to 20 different finishes. Its a bit overwhelming how many options are available.

www audionote.co.uk

Thank you for your inquiry and the detailed questions. Below is our general feedback for your system.

1. Some listening rooms have different height and some open up to another area. We normally try to get a floor plan with dimensions to help a client figure things out but all else being equal, we would say that the minimum size for a pair of G3’s is 250 s.f and for G4’s is 200 s.f. It also depends on what else is in the room, where your sitting area is etc.
2. You should know that G3’s punches well outside its weight and is quite an exceptional loudspeaker while the G4’s are really not a match. From a technical standpoint, G3’s have the same mid range drivers as the G1’s and G2’s while the G4’s use smaller drivers.
3. Historically speaking, you should know that G4’s were originally developed for the Japan market that have small listening rooms. However, even the Japanese opted for the G3’s, rendering the G4’s a poor seller worldwide by far.
4. Given the height, to put the G4’s drivers at ear level, Vivid has to offer a plinth underneath each speaker. That’s extra cost and when we were distributing them, we actually couldn’t justify the cost to our clients when compared to what clients would get for G3’s from a $/performance standpoint.

Thank you for your valued inquiry.

Your request is not a simple as a yay or nay, unfortunately! Your room, although small, is perfectly adequate for high quality audio reproduction. Personally however, I would add acoustic treatment if required, a little at a time. With absorption anyway, less is more in small room acoustics.
I presume your walls are of dry walling construction? If so the LF energy is of little concern due to the transparent nature (to LF anyway), of the studded wall construction.
The least of your worries are the side firing woofers - this is a common fallacy which folks seem to make - in that the wavefront emanating from he bass units is directional. Not so at all.
The size of the room would necessitate careful placement ensuring the front drivers (higher frequencies), are not squirting too much energy on the primary and secondary reflection points of the room, as with all loudspeakers.
Essentially we could have placed the LF drivers on the front baffle or the rear baffle - acoustically due the long wavelength, their relative position on the loudspeaker is irrelevant.
The room will "see" an LF source centered about the median of the loudspeaker. In the case of the KAYA K45, this LF source is a particularly clean well behaved one (not the norm), resulting in easy placement in rooms.
Are you perhaps able to try out a pair in your room?

Thiel Audio CS 1.6 or CS 1.7.

Happy Listening!