Vintage Advents too big for small room?

Plato,

I agree with you, and I wish I could get the speakers out of the corners, but in a room that size my options are limited. I do have a very absorbing futon couch opposite the speakers. I'm sure that most small monitors don't do much below 60hz, so that's probably the best solution. Any that you've heard and liked?

Ritualistic audio hoohah? Maybe I need some of that. :-)

Rockvirgo: Getting the Advents up on just any old platform, at least for experimental purposes, is a great idea. I don't have any shelves or dressers in this room, so the Advents or any other speakers would have to be on the floor and vertical, both for space considerations and WAF. The Advents have served me well for 25 years now - I'd never part with them. If I can't make them work in this space, they'll go into storage for the next house.

Plato: I've looked at the VonSchweikerts and the Green Mountains and they're out of my price range even used. The Paradigms just slide under the $500 mark used but are rare. Would the speakers I mentioned above be too much of a step down from the Advents? I realize I'd give up some bass, but the room can't deal with it anyway.

I love Audiogon. No matter where you're going, someone's always been there before.

I'm definitely going to experiment with the Advents first. Rich, those sound like beautiful stands. If I can get the Advents to sound right, glass stands would be great for a permanent solution.

Anybody ready to argue that smaller monitors would actually *improve* the sound in this room? I'm willing to spend the money if I can gain a marked improvement. For those of you willing to make monitor recommendations, the rest of my system is:

Music Hall MMF 2.1/Shure V15Vxmr
NAD 7140 receiver
Adcom GCD-565 CD player
New Advents, updated drivers as outlined above

MMF 2.1 to be replaced by modded Thorens TD 150/Rega RB250/Shure V15 when I can find the time to complete the mods.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

David

Rich,

I'm already working on the stands. I agree that physics works against smaller speakers, but obviously the room is part of the physics too. Isn't that balancing act part of why we all love audio and spend so much time debating it here? :-)

One of the reasons I have wireless Ethernet in my house is so I can be listening to music while simultaneously reading and posting here...what could be better? :-)

David

How much room do monitors typically need? I can only get the Advents about 6 inches from the wall due to their size and my room constraints, but smaller monitors could be 12 inches or more from the walls. Would that be enough, or would monitors need more than that to function properly?

Okay, I got the Advents out of the corners and up on stands, and I'm beginning to remember why I fell in love with them 25 years ago. My next question is about spacing and toe-in. The only general rule I can find is that the distance from the speaker face to your ears should be 1.5 times the distance between the speaker centers. Is this a valid rule? If you have to err on one side or the other, is it better to be farther than 1.5/1 or closer? In this room I'm 8 ft (96") from the speaker faces, so theoretical ideal spacing would be 64". Due to furniture, electrical, and WAF limitations I can get them to about 70", or I can get them at about 50", with 70" being logistically preferable - that's where they are presently. Would it be worth the trouble to try them at 50"? If the crowd here has had experience to know it's not worth it, it would save me a fair amount of moving.

Additionally, I'm sure they'll need to be toed in a bit. Is the best starting point with the speaker faces perpendicular to my sitting point?

I may get this room listenable yet!

I wanted to revive this thread just to thank everyone for the great advice and provide an update. The depth of knowledge and helpfulness here on Audiogon is truly humbling.

After exhausting my possibilities with placement and room treatment, I broke down and bought a pair of Epos ELS-3s with 30" stands. As expected, they are a much better match for the small room, pretty much eliminating the boominess and mud I was getting from the Advents. At that point, I had changed nothing else in my system.

What I was NOT expecting, was the incredible increase in detail and speed. While the Advents were close to SOTA in the late 70s, time and technology march on. I just hadn't realized how slow the tweeters in the Advents had become, and how much faster the 5.5" mid in the Epos could move compared to the 10" driver in the Advents. The difference was phenomenal, especially in my small room, and even more so at low listening levels.

With the NAD 7140 powering them, I certainly wasn't getting the bottom octave or so that I got from the Advents, but what I got was so much cleaner I almost didn't miss it. Since then, I've added a Hafler DH-200 that I'm about halfway through modding, still using the phono/tuner/preamp in the NAD and now I'm not missing it at all. The added power and damping factor of the Hafler has improved the bass of the Epos' to the point where I'm giving my room just about as much as it can handle without overloading it. At low listening levels, I still get almost everything. I'm amazed, frankly.

I also built myself some speaker cables from nice 12 gauge OFC and gold spades and bananas. I'm stunned at the improvements I've gained just from these simple upgrades, and for about $400 total shipped. Next I'm ready to start modding out my Thorens TD 150, then probably a second round of mods on the Hafler. I'll be hitting you guys up for advice again, I'm sure.

Thanks to all who have contributed so far. Have I reached the stage yet where I can post my system without embarassing myself? :-)

David