General Speaker Advice and Recommendations

It's usually not optimal to have a wall directly behind the listening position, but I think the proposed space would still give you enough room to play around, perhaps moving the speakers closer together and the listening position a little closer to the speakers. Diffusion on the wall behind the listening position can also be helpful. I'm figuring out a similar layout with slightly smaller dimensions and way too big speakers at the moment. Acoustic treatments can work wonders.

Moving the speakers closer to the rear wall and installing bass traps if there is a large corner boost can also work.

 

You've gotten some pretty good advice already. My layout is not in a basement, but similar in that my room is open to a large space, and I have my speakers and couch oriented as you plan to. Looks to me like you could have speakers 3' from back and side walls, 9' apart and 9' from listening position. That's pretty optimal.

With regard to the questions:
1. The lack of a back wall won't have much affect on loudness except for bass; I think "small to medium" should be fine unless you like it really loud.
2. Are you thinking you'd leave the concrete uncovered? If you're gonna be putting in a wall, I'd think it would be worthwhile to put drywall over it.
3. I would leave it open as it's one less place that might need room treatment.

I'd start out by borrowing a couple different floor-standers if you can. Even if not your jam, you should get a feel for whether bass is strong enough for you, and how much room reflection you're hearing/what treatment is gonna be needed. Get that at least partly resolved and then audition for real. A lot of speaker companies will do 30 day trials w/return if you don't like them (might have to pay return shipping)

 

Thanks for all the above advice. Lots of food for thought.

And thanks for these detailed answers to my questions.
1. So with "small to medium" speakers I'm likely to be lacking bass in this large room? Should I be looking for speakers with moar bass?
2. All the rooms are finished with drywall (now that I think of it, pretty sure the back wall and right corner are too). I guess if the back wall and right corner are drywall-over-concrete, then drywall on wood frame wouldn't be that different acoustically, as there's supposed to be a gap between concrete and drywall (I just googled this). One less thing to worry about.
The floor is concrete with radiant heating (IIRC). Will put down some carpet between speakers and listening position.

The reason I'm not too certain of the construction details is that the house is 12 time zones away and I haven't been there for several years (it's currently rented out).

In my mind, I'm trying to plan and go straight to an "end game" setup. I really don't want to play the game with 2ch as I've done with headphones. The cost and size of components is going to make it that much harder to get CFO approval every time. I hadn't thought of borrowing speakers first to see what the room sounds like. I have a friend in town who I can borrow some powered Mackies from and run straight out of my DACs. Or his passive standmounts and use the Chi-Fi Class A/B I have running my TV 2.1 system in Taiwan. I have a tentative plan to have someone build me a First Watt F-5T that should be able to handle any speakers I'm likely to buy.

 

If you do not want to go on the gear merry go round, my 2 cents are, run your room through a simulation:

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-roommodes.htm

https://www.hunecke.de/de/rechner/lautsprecher.html

https://www.hunecke.de/de/rechner/raumeigenmoden.html

Room acoustics are often regarded differently in the US compared to Europe. I never understood that until someone I know moved to the US and they said that nearly all room problems disappeared. This is most probably due to larger sized rooms and the use of less concrete in the US.
In my opinion there is no best speaker only a best speaker for your room and your taste. I would start out measuring the room with REW ( need a mic and if not USB an audiointerface). In order to increase ratio direct sound/reflections you can use horny speakers or put up absorbers at first reflection points (or both). You do not want to sit to close to the rear wall (again early reflections), a starting point could be something like 1/3 room length away from the rear wall. Allison will get you anyway, in a room the size of yours. Putting the speakers a long distance away from the front wall (very low frequency extinction) is not really an option, maybe better to put them quite close to the front wall (quite high frequency extinction). Your room is nearly square, so modes will add up and you will have a big one at around 34 Hz. In that case you may opt for speakers with -6 dB drop of around 40 Hz, using the room gain to support the speakers.
Most important have fun.

 

Thanks for the simulation links. I'll try to get the exact dimensions from our property manager.

In case it wasn't clear, the dotted line only refers to the area I'll be allotted. There will be no rear wall and I will have empty space behind me.

Who's Allison?
Assume this is a typo/autocorrect.

 

my bad for the dimension, all the better for you not to have a square listening room.

As for Allison:
https://www.audiovero.de/acourate-w...eaker,to cancellations at certain frequencies.

and

https://www.genelec.com/monitor-placement

 

You've gotten pretty solid advice already, but I just want to point out that there's no really skipping to the "end game" in 2ch as the variability is even higher (if you think about it, all headphones are widebanders compared to the amount of different driver arrangements of speakers) and your sonic preferences will come far more into play. I second trying as much as you can, even if it's just in visiting dealers or personal setups to help avoid churn cost, but some amount will be necessary because unless you've heard it before, hard to know if you'll like horns with tubes or monitor style speakers with high power SS or everything in between.

 

Very possibly. Is there a reason you don't want to use a subwoofer? If you are putting together a purist 2 channel system, yeah they can be a PITA. If you're gonna put together a music & theater system, it should be pretty easy.

You can get a good quality sub for music for < $1k. That could be a lot less than moving up from smaller speakers that would work well for your layout except for low bass, to the next size up in the product range.

 

+ infinity on this. And the room will have the biggest impact on what you hear and cannot be determined in advance, no matter what fancy simulators or tools you try.

IMO, buy used if you can, especially for your speakers, to minimize possible losses. Or find a dealer/seller that will let you do an in-home trial. That’s the only way you will truly know if you’ll like what you’re buying. Otherwise it’s a complete crap shoot and you should be prepared to lose money on your speakers - so I would spend less than the max you have in your budget assuming you’ll probably need to sell for a loss at some point.

 

I'd add, too, that one could forego the "purist" audiophile route and go powered and DSP'ed "big" monitor route and get fiddly with the EQ to suit taste. Something like the Buchardt A500 (or stretch to the A700) might allow one to sort-of side step a horrendous gear-cycling period in a new room, while getting a better feeling for what sort of response will play "nicely" with that room. At least, this is what I tell myself if I were to do it all over again for a sub $10k (all in) 2ch setup: good full function preamp/streamer + DSP powered speakers + maybe a sub depending on size of the room.

 

You would be foolish to buy expensive speakers without a listening test at your home. Simulation and room measurement will let you know your room. Based on that you can make an informed choice of your preferred combination of room treatment/speaker choice. If you do not like to treat your room, then you should choose your speakers accordingly. Room treatment will broaden the choice of speakers which will work in your room. For me to treat first reflection points is a must (in most rooms) because otherwise staging will be messed up . Beyond that it is also a question of personal choice, there are people (me included) who want to be at the venue (however artificial that may be in case of a studio recording), then you do not want to hear your room. Others want the musicians to play in their room, those want to hear their room,(too).

 

Actually a good point. Something as flexible as the active Buchardt speakers, with the Platin hub (which adds room correction) could mitigate a lot of potential problems, but I’m sure still not a panacea.

 

Maybe I don't understand what I'm doing but anytime I try doing some sort of digital EQing the phase issues introduced kind of cucks the frequency ranges I'm adjusting for. Things feel a little weird and distant and imaging gets blurry. Maybe you just need to go fully active instead of trying to mix DSP with a passive crossover? There must be something I'm missing.

 

I have these, with the Primare hub (which sounds a bit better than the platin hub to my ear). I didn't follow the whole thread to see what budget is, but I think it would be difficult to put together a full system (streamer, dac, pre, power, speakers, stands, cables) that sounded anywhere near as good anywhere close to their price point. Indeed, last week I auditioned some DeVore (O/96) speakers with a pile of overly expensive electronics powering them (mostly Naim) and I think the Buchards sound better at ~1/10th the price. They also legitimately go down to the lower end of the audible range which the above system didn't approach. They are not perfect, but they are quite good. And they are quite customizable. The downside is that there is nowhere to go in terms of buying more gear if that's your thing. Also, with a higher budget, take a look at https://dutchdutch.com/

 

Same here, last attempt was taking listening position measurements with umik-1/REW and then DSP EQing to get flat with single driver speakers and the result was wonky/artificial sounding.

 

You can’t EQ your way out of everything, definitely. Also it’s speaker dependant and heavily impacted by the directivity of the speaker and what frequencies you’re trying to EQ. IME, stick to major bass peaks below the Schroeder frequency (you can’t fix the dips anyhow in most cases).

 

Makes sense. Stick to DSP for bass, only.

 

Yep that’s what i do as well. My setup is a minidsp studio as streamer and dirac box feeding my dac into a pre and then an active crossover into my power amp and subs. So the subs and mains are both placed optimally and time aligned. I basically use dirac to adjust the curve below the schroeder frequency(500hz in my case) to tame any peaks. The mains are already set up correctly to follow the rest of the curve i prefer. I kind of use everything, dsp, room treatment etc…

 

This is super important and actually impacts things like do I want a wall behind me. If you want a more live sound where the room itself contributes then a small room is hopeless as all the reflections are early reflections and it's a big mess, so you would not want a wall. If you want to hear mainly the room in the recording you will need quite a bit of mid/high absorption/diffusion in terms of % of room boundary covered, and with nothing behind you that could be quite a lot. So here some drywall behind you would usefully reduce the room size for mid/high purposes. You still don't want a wall like directly behind your head as you either have weird comb filtering or weird dead absorption but 3-5ft away could be a decent compromise.

Would second looking into a sub. A good REL or Rythmik or SVS would not be that much and would give you a lot more control over the bass. With the volume knob and 1 band analogue PEQ on the sub, plus latitude in positioning, it's probably enough to avoid needing to mess around with DSP.

 

I think a lot of getting DSP xover + room correction to not sound fucked, despite matching a house curve target response has to do with how little the speakers will play the room. Controlled directivity and very even power response seems to be "the way" for a system conceived to only operate with DSP and all the trimmings.

I tried REW+umic and didn't care for it running full range. flat staging, dull and lifeless. Running convolution under 200Hz or so was quite less egregious, but in the end I settled on a sub with flatter response out of the box, with some built in PEQ.