speakers too big for a room. Rooms too small for speakers

Hi,

I cannot post direct links because more or less everything now contains ads, but Google the following words: room size/lowest frequency, room size/wavelengths ratios and you will find articles that explain, simply, which is the lowest frequency you can expect to get in your room given its size, and what are the 'best' proportions for a room to 'sound' good.

The matter of volume is another one; my humble opinion is that the more you turn up the pot, the more the resonances, the reflections, the less the clarity unless you have a professionally treated ambient. I have heard S-400s sound good in a very large and in a very small room, and small speakers make real music in large environments. My only constant conviction is that 90 times out of 100 speakers sound better placed along the long wall and across the short one, and that something between 1,5 and 1,6 as ratio between the two dimensions is a good thing.

Best,

Max

Alonso posted:

... any science behind them? 

There's no way to apply a scientific approach to such a multivariate and subjective question.

Alonso posted:

.... why is it that we never see minimum ‘room volumes? 

The Totem Acoustics site provides recommended minimum distances for placement from rear wall and distance apart for their speakers. Taking these into account along with your presumed listening distance from the speakers, you could infer a minimum room volume. This would assume a conventional ceiling height. Totem also states an "average room" as being 4x6 m (12x20 ft). Seems kind of big to me.

Max_B posted:

"...I have heard S-400s sound good in a very large and in a very small room, and small speakers make real music in large environments.."

Thank you Max. this leads me to think that there are many more variables involved that just 'room size' vs 'speaker size' - Furnishings, dimensions, materials, etc, play a huge role. One cannot simply state with any degree of certainty "Oh, these floor standers with 15" woofers will not work in your 3.5m x 5m room, you need a larger room" - I know that I'm not saying anything new, but I am starting to wonder if the reason we do not see more floor standers in the 'average British lounge' is more down to WAF than to anything else...

Try using the "Room Simulation" dialog of REW.  You'll be able to see the interaction of the speakers range with the position of the speakers and listening position and the acoustic performance of the room.

In respect of the speakers...
The size is irrelevant.
The port arrangement of the speakers (if used) is irrelevant.
It's only the low bass response and the relative HF response that make any real difference.

What Max says about the volume is spot on.

I have been educating myself to listen at lower volumes where the "room effect" is much less. Quality instead of quantity being difficult in my room to have booth. Maybe because i have the speakers in the shorter wall.

I also believe that in the longer wall is better but here it is not possible!

Late night listening sessions can be fantastic; listen more to the music than the room, and because listening loud is not an option, you don't think about raising the volume.

Regards

Rui

The Fletcher-Munson effect is much more prominent at low volumes, causing you to perceive less effect of frequency extremes.

However the lower volumes also mean that you hear less information in the sound.

Huge posted:

The Fletcher-Munson effect is much more prominent at low volumes, causing you to perceive less effect of frequency extremes.

However the lower volumes also mean that you hear less information in the sound.

THIS!

 our hearing sucks at very low and very high frequencies...  and THIS is the issue that has always bothered me with Late Night Listening... you miss a helluva lot of information. In fact, sometimes I don't even bother listening past 10pm, the SQ literally sucks, I mean, not the SQ,  but our ears

I think the only true solution to the LNL problem are cans... 

We all listen differently.

I did several exams to my ears and they say i listen well at all frequencies.

My room effect (boom) must be more problematic than the Fletcher-Munson effect. Neat Petites SX with 300 play very well at low volumes. I listen to a lot of baroque music (small ochestras) and the speed and interplay at low volumes is incredible. I now have the speakers more close together so that i can have more focus and "power" in the sound.

Of course, i would love to listen way louder but not being possible here, i have to make the most of it listening at lower volumes.

I listen between 8 and 9 during the day. At night less than 8. There is plenty of sound here; maybe it is because of the Petites. Also, when you put the speakers close to each other, you need less volume.

Among other things, it depends on the room, the speaker design, the listener, and, more than anything else, placement of both speakers and listening position in the room.

i have used big IMF RSPM monitors (some 40” tall by 20” wide by 16” deep, transmission line design) in a variety of rooms, the smallest only about 16ft by 11ft9in, all quite happily. But I don’t have experience of them in smaller rroms, always ensuring that houses I buy have relatively large listening rooms. But that said they sounded their best outdoors, wth no normal room constraints.

Adding to the speculation, I've noticed some speakers have a "sweet spot", a volume at which they seem to perform optimally. This is likely a function of the room, the power amp, the speakers' placement in the room, the listener's tastes, as well as the design of the speakers. My previous speakers performed best for me at 'loudish' volumes. My current speakers are larger and more demanding of power, but perform well at a wider range of volumes. Point being that speaker size versus room size is an oversimplification of how a given speaker might perform.

Rui Marques posted:

I have been educating myself to listen at lower volumes where the "room effect" is much less. Quality instead of quantity being difficult in my room to have booth. Maybe because i have the speakers in the shorter wall.

Regards

Rui

It's almost exactly the same for me. I know that speakers work well on long walls, but I have to keep mine on the short one. Educating myself to listen at a lower volume is something I hadn't thought about consciously, but I now realize it's just what I have been doing all the time, searching and testing and trying. I now also realize how precise and critical is the moment/point where I feel that the volume is 'right' and more than that would make the room resonate negatively. 

Thanks for this hint, and best with your mise au point.

Max

Joe, I have always thought that speakers have a sweet spot for volume in your room, but that it was recording dependent. I often adjust volume for each new album but not tracks within an album. I tend to enjoy higher volumes but back off when negative room interactions intrude.

I just thought everyone did this...

Stu

Max and Rui,

I have been listening a relatively low volumes for many years. The potentiometer usually stays  between 8 and 9 o’clock. Having largish speakers helps doing this as they tend to be fuller in the lower octaves, quasi a inverse Fletcher-Munson effect.

In my current setup I have the speakers on the short wall, although I very much prefer them on the long wall.

stuart.ashen posted:

Joe, I have always thought that speakers have a sweet spot for volume in your room, but that it was recording dependent. I often adjust volume for each new album but not tracks within an album. I tend to enjoy higher volumes but back off when negative room interactions intrude.

Stu, I agree volume adjustments are needed where signal strength varies between recordings, notably between early and modern CDs. Modern CDs generally play louder. Still, given a relative volume between recordings, I've found some speakers to have a narrower sweet spot. Other speakers exhibit a wider sweet spot. This being independent of the speaker cabinet size or whether they are 2, 2.5, or 3-way design. The largest speakers I've had home are the S-400s and they played excellently at a wide range of volumes. Just that I couldn't live with their overall tonal balance.

If you're finding negative room interactions at high volumes, acoustic room treatment might be worth exploring (if you haven't already done so). Then again, playing at lower volume is good for long-term hearing protection.

Rui Marques posted:

We all listen differently.I did several exams to my ears and they say i listen well at all frequencies.

 

Not doubting your human hearing capabilities and I am sure that when you got your results, they were circumscribed to what humans in general can hear, and humans are NOT good at the extremes end of the hearing spectrum, evolution (running away from predators) made us that way...  The typical V form of equalizers of yesteryear and the loudness functions were all there to compensate that, the lower the SPL, the less we hear at far ends of the hearing spectrum.

One of the advantages with an active setup is that it is very good at playing at low volume. The efficiency of the speakers should also make a difference, more efficient speakers working best at low volume.

Claus

I use ATC SCM150ASLT towers in a 12' x 19' room, and they sound superb, because they have so much power in reserve. Much better to my mind than small speakers straining in a big room.

Claus-Thoegersen posted:

The efficiency of the speakers should also make a difference, more efficient speakers working best at low volume.

To me it's more about efficient speakers requiring less power to drive them. Tube users often fans of hi efficiency speakers.

Claus-Thoegersen posted:

. The efficiency of the speakers should also make a difference, more efficient speakers working best at low volume.

 

Not sure that this is true - it may be the case with for some, and not for others. More down to individual characteristics than the efficiency - why would the efficiency make a difference to how well they play quietly? If anything, one might expect less efficient soeakers to be better than more efficient ones, if only because efficient soeakers would make any power amp noise (e.g hiss) louder, which at low sound level would be more likely to become intrusive with loud passages.

Reading some of the contributions here leaves me a little bemused: I want to listen at the level I like, which can vary with type of music, and with my own mood and can vary from very loud to moderately quiet. Speakers simply have to be able to encompass all, or are of no use to me. 

So far I’ve been lucky enough for room interactions to not spoil what my speakers could do, though with every one of the eight houses I’ve owned since 1975 a decent size music room has been a key priority, although in my present room the shape caused it to require the assistance of REW software to locate the best speaker and listening positions.

Hi IB,

I want to listen at a level I like, too. But for me that level usually is a low one and I want to enjoy music that way. Therefore speakers and amplifiers that “need a certain level to come alive” are not for me. Sometimes I like listening to music loud and I expect my speakers to handle that as well.

Mulberry posted:

amplifiers that “need a certain level to come alive” are not for me.

The paradox here is that higher power amps will likely perform better at lower volumes, and all volumes, than lower power amps (Class A/B, appropriate load).

Claus-Thoegersen posted:

<snip>

 The efficiency of the speakers should also make a difference, more efficient speakers working best at low volume.

Claus

Unfortunately that's another urban myth (like the one that more efficient speakers are an easier load for an amplifier), there are many more things to do with the mechanical properties of the cones/domes, crossover filters, electromagnetic motors and driver suspensions that have a much greater effect than the efficiency rating at 1KHz.