Guide to buying bigger speakers

The problem you will have with larger speakers is that they will start to excite the 28Hz resonance (which the 21s won't) and also increase the excitation of the 48.5Hz resonance.

How significant this is to you, only you can determine.  Unfortunately, the only real way to do that is to do a home demo and compare the results to what you get in a home demo using a sub connected via a digital room correction system (or use a sub with a DSP built in).

Speakers are a very personal choice after upgrading my system a couple of years ago I was rather surprised at the difference from one make to another in fact after demoing several pairs ended up purchasing a pair that weren’t on my radar prior to the demonstration, personally myself I wouldn’t purchase on another persons recommendation. Listening is a must.

Huge posted:

The problem you will have with larger speakers is that they will start to excite the 28Hz resonance (which the 21s won't) and also increase the excitation of the 48.5Hz resonance.

How significant this is to you, only you can determine.  Unfortunately, the only real way to do that is to do a home demo and compare the results to what you get in a home demo using a sub connected via a digital room correction system (or use a sub with a DSP built in).

Hi Huge, I am interested by your references to specific resonant frequencies, are these generic or can they be easily calculated? In all ignorance I'm not sure how much this effect would bother me.

Pcd posted:

Speakers are a very personal choice after upgrading my system a couple of years ago I was rather surprised at the difference from one make to another in fact after demoing several pairs ended up purchasing a pair that weren’t on my radar prior to the demonstration, personally myself I wouldn’t purchase on another persons recommendation. Listening is a must.

Hi PCD, I agree speaker choice is very personal and having owned a couple of pairs of small stand mounts I am accustomed to a 'bass light' sound, I do have a good relationship with my local dealer so I might be a little cheeky and try a few of the likely suspects in the store demo room. 

Worry is I might end up paying for new ones!

Roog, After more or less an audio lifetime of standmounters, my similar worries about a pair of used Naim Allaes in this otherwise difficult room proved unfounded.

Easily found secondhand I think.

C.

Christopher_M posted:

Roog, After more or less an audio lifetime of standmounters, my similar worries about a pair of used Naim Allaes in this otherwise difficult room proved unfounded.

Easily found secondhand I think.

C.

 

Thank you for your thoughts Christopher_M, I am on the look out for all manner of floor standers, but I haden't considered the ex naim range.  The Allaes appear manageable size wise.

One aspect I have noted is the new modern home I now have requires much greater volume from the amp, its like the room sucks up the sound far more than before.

ROOG posted:

One aspect I have noted is the new modern home I now have requires much greater volume from the amp, its like the room sucks up the sound far more than before.

This is where the extra welly from floorstanders will help you I think. Especially if they are efficient.

Your room is large enough and you have good height (often overlooked) so large speakers can work in that room from my experience, but several things need to be done:

1. Big speakers need good control and usually a reasonably powerful Amp, so always audition and consider the Amp and speakers as a set as they really define what you can get.

2. The room geometry means you need to play with placement and be prepared for either across the room or down it and find what works. Personally I find if you have a good floor or can make it solid enough then once you experiment with positioning and associated furnishings you don't need lots of special room treatments, but you can't just bung them in anywhere and expect great results.

Larger speakers give a wider bandwidth and require more installation care to perform right. The up-side is you don't get something for nothing and good quality low-bass is a whole realm in itself once you have it and can explore it musically - you can't get that from smaller speaker bass responses.

So you just need to audition speakers and amp somewhere and be prepared to take some time getting the speakers right in the room. Best if you can home-demo, as there are peculiar cases where some speakers really do not work with some rooms due to where their own bass resonance is placed with respect to the room and how well it is controlled by the Amp.

DB.

Allaes would be fine if you like classical, jazz etc. but if like me you also like rock and dub reggae you might find you won't get the bass impact you are seeking - ime of course.

Thanks DB, yes I think I might have to put on my best 'straight face' and delve in to the local HiFi shop offerings to try some out. 

Going back to the secondhand market are there any from the range of Naim floor standers which would be easy for my SU to drive?  

Buying used from a dealer might give you the chance of home demos and is probably the best route to take. Buying private without trying at home is going to be long and frustrating unless you're very lucky and my cost more in the end if you buy a bad'n you'd have trouble moving on. Bargian SL2s are very rare.

What are the walls like, Solid or plasterboard?

Are you looking for something to suit a superuniti?

If you like your current PMC, why not go for their floorstanders? I guess the risk that you don't like them is fairly low.  But of course you wouldn't know whether something much better is out there. Life is full of trade-offs, isn't it?  FWIW, I rather like my PMC25.23.

The Dynaudio Xcite range 32, 34 & 38 are all excellent floorstanders at about the same budget as pmc’s. 

Hi Yeti42, the walls are block work, with the inner block being very light weight. The walls are drywall plaster board on block on three sides and the same on metal studding on the forth wall. Floor is concrete. 

I noted that SL2's are rare, (they look good to my eye) and technically very  interesting.

I think I will be keeping my SU for a while so I guess what ever the future speakers are they should be a match for it. I don't play music loud, i find most public demos too loud for me. 

I acknowledge the need to demo some pairs, it would just be nice to narrow the field a little if possible.  :0)

ROOG posted:

Huge posted:

The problem you will have with larger speakers is that they will start to excite the 28Hz resonance (which the 21s won't) and also increase the excitation of the 48.5Hz resonance.

How significant this is to you, only you can determine.  Unfortunately, the only real way to do that is to do a home demo and compare the results to what you get in a home demo using a sub connected via a digital room correction system (or use a sub with a DSP built in).

Hi Huge, I am interested by your references to specific resonant frequencies, are these generic or can they be easily calculated? In all ignorance I'm not sure how much this effect would bother me.

 

The calculation is easy...

Sound travels at about 340ms^-1 in air at STP, and the fundamental resonance of a box occurs when the half wave distance matches one dimension of the box.  So, resonance point occur at frequencies (Hz) of

340 / (distance between walls x 2).

If you want to investigate this further, get a copy of REW and run the room simulation dialogue.  It's not perfect, but generally it'll give a fairly good idea of what will happen.

Incidentally the room you have isn't too bad as 28Hz and 48.5 Hz aren't too close to each other, nor are they constructively closely related by simple axial harmonic addition (N.B. but I haven't analysed for any of the higher resonance modes, i.e. tangential or oblique).

I've heard system where I've though "I couldn't live with that."; but I've also heard systems with large speakers in small rooms and thought "How on earth is that working so well".  Trying it is really the only way to find out - particularly if you analyse it using a calibrated microphone (and, no, an iPhone won't do!) or comparing to a calibrated sub.

My room is pretty small, and rather "active" due to hard floors, no carpet, and no fabric on the windows.  The room excites pretty quickly and while I too felt I wanted more bass, bigger speakers did NOT help.

I have a subwoofer, and while many audio experts decry use of a sub for true home hi fi, it works wonderfully for me.  It does room sensing, and I have its output set so that it's quite subtle.  It absolutely adds the lower end that I wanted, and when I close my eyes and sit between the speakers on my couch, I cannot detect the bass being localized to the sub.  It truly integrates into the soundstage.  So for me, this is a great solution.  And I get to keep my speakers which I otherwise love so much.

Hi Huge, Now you have captured my interest, (not sure if my intellect is up to it though) .

I do have a MiniDSP Umik-1 mic and Faber Acoustical 'Signal Scope Pro' which includes FFT and real time spectogram Analyser scope and signal generator etc.  I purchased this to 'see what was happening' with a DIY project a coupe of years ago, but i have never used it to specifically investigate 'the room'.

Is it possible to 'view' the room characteristics using this kit?

Bart posted:

My room is pretty small, and rather "active" due to hard floors, no carpet, and no fabric on the windows.  The room excites pretty quickly and while I too felt I wanted more bass, bigger speakers did NOT help.

I have a subwoofer, and while many audio experts decry use of a sub for true home hi fi, it works wonderfully for me.  It does room sensing, and I have its output set so that it's quite subtle.  It absolutely adds the lower end that I wanted, and when I close my eyes and sit between the speakers on my couch, I cannot detect the bass being localized to the sub.  It truly integrates into the soundstage.  So for me, this is a great solution.  And I get to keep my speakers which I otherwise love so much.

Hi Bart,  Thank you for your input, I greatly appreciate it.

I have not tried a Sub, and when I mentioned buying one, my local HiFi shop talked me out of it. This is an interesting option, keeping the speed of my little PMCs but adding the bottom end.

Which sub did you go for if you don't mind me asking please?  

Yes, instead of using an oscilloscope, if you use the right software tool and it become much easier.

Download a copy of REW and follow the instructions.  It'll analyse your system / room for Frequency Response, Reverberation (decay vs frequency) and impulse time response (useful for seeing reflections).

Huge posted:

Yes, instead of using an oscilloscope, if you use the right software tool and it become much easier.

Download a copy of REW and follow the instructions.  It'll analyse your system / room for Frequency Response, Reverberation (decay vs frequency) and impulse time response (useful for seeing reflections).

I have heard of REW, I shall have a look, thank you Huge

What if we could take the room out of the Equation with Bigger Speakers ? 

I recently heard a pair of Full Range Active speakers with Cardioid Bass Response and DSP called Dutch and Dutch 8C . They were extremely impressive at a dealers domestic environment and to my ears they outperformed Active ATC50s with a Weiss DAC in that room . The Distance to rear (as close as 10cm) and side walls is entered via an app and DSP takes care of the lower frequencies , they work with the rear wall using it as a virtual springboard . They were very engaging to listen to with a level of clarity I'd never heard before on familiar tracks . I'll be trying a pair at home once my works are finished . 

Has anyone else come across these speakers or similar such as the Kii Three ? Very clever technology indeed !!

ROOG posted:

Bart posted:

My room is pretty small, and rather "active" due to hard floors, no carpet, and no fabric on the windows.  The room excites pretty quickly and while I too felt I wanted more bass, bigger speakers did NOT help.

I have a subwoofer, and while many audio experts decry use of a sub for true home hi fi, it works wonderfully for me.  It does room sensing, and I have its output set so that it's quite subtle.  It absolutely adds the lower end that I wanted, and when I close my eyes and sit between the speakers on my couch, I cannot detect the bass being localized to the sub.  It truly integrates into the soundstage.  So for me, this is a great solution.  And I get to keep my speakers which I otherwise love so much.

Hi Bart,  Thank you for your input, I greatly appreciate it.

I have not tried a Sub, and when I mentioned buying one, my local HiFi shop talked me out of it. This is an interesting option, keeping the speed of my little PMCs but adding the bottom end.

Which sub did you go for if you don't mind me asking please?  

I also use a sub.  Just as for Bart, it gives me the bass fill in and integrates seamlessly without any sense of being disjointed either tonally or in the soundstage.  Note that I find subs with sealed enclosures to integrate better into the main speakers due to the shorter group delay (better timing) that they have.

It's aligned to the rest of the system using REW to analyse the performance and using a miniDSP 2x4 to do the the crossover and digital room mode correction.

Using REW really simplified the job of integrating the sub.

I found the REW sofware, i shall down load it and try to under stand how to use it later, thanks again Huge.

Sorry for another question but, regarding Sub-woofers, are we talking about the 'Rel' type products, or is there a specific product for music rather than AV sound effects?   

pete T15 posted:

What if we could take the room out of the Equation with Bigger Speakers ? 

I recently heard a pair of Active speakers with Cardioid Bass Response and DSP called Dutch and Dutch 8C . They were extremely impressive at a dealers domestic environment and to my ears they outperformed Active ATC50s with a Weiss DAC in that room . The Distance to rear (as close as 10cm) and side walls is entered via an app and DSP takes care of the lower frequencies , they work with the rear wall using it as a virtual springboard . They were very engaging to listen to with a level of clarity I'd never heard before on familiar tracks . I'll be trying a pair at home once my works are finished . 

Has anyone else come across these speakers or similar such as the Kii Three ? Very clever technology indeed !!

The problem with most DRC systems is twofold:

First they require a trip through a ADC DSP DAC system that imposes limitations on quality compared to bit perfect replay.
Second, they alter the acoustic clues (harmonic relationships, group delays / phase) quite dramatically over very short ranges of frequencies.

When these are done in the midrange then there's an inevitable loss of perceived quality compared to a straightforward replay chain using the same components (without any additional ADCs, additional DSP or additional DACs).  Restricting this processing to only the bass frequencies (where the ear is much less discriminating) reduces the detrimental audible impact of these changes.

Incidentally you can't achieve a cardioid response in bass frequencies unless you're talking about a true free space environment and very large baffles (baffle width > λ/2 each side of the driver and distance to the nearest boundary >>2λ, i.e. for 28Hz the baffle needs to be 12m wide and the distance to the nearest boundary needs to be considerably more than 24m!).

Before getting my SL2s I was using PMC twenty.23s. My room is about 5m long by 3.6m wide. The 23s, driven by an SU, were excellent. I tried the 21s before getting the 23s but they didn’t have the bass extension I wanted. With the SU you don’t want to spend too much on speakers, and if you like the 21s you are unlikely to go wrong with some used 23s. They are fine speakers.