fact 12

Some big ones, some small ones and some medium sized ones. Rooms are an acoustic lottery in my experience, rarely following any rules.

A visiting friend loved the sound of my Kudos Titan T88's in my small-ish and acoustically difficult room enough to ask my dealer Signals in Suffolk to take a pair for home dem to his home in West Sussex. The said friend has a lovely big room. Did the Titans work there? Nope.

But PMC fact12's did - really well, and he bought a pair.

John.

Johnny5 posted:

So anybody what size room will suit fact 12?

As mentioned in your other current thread about Fact 12, they worked OK in two different rooms of around 18ft by 13-14ft. N.B. the room size and layouts are very rough estimates in terms of size, from memory and without and direct meaurements, and as stated I did feel that the speaker's sensitivity and power handling capacity may limit the maximum usable room size compared to some speakers (depending of course on how loud one likes to listen and the furnishings etc., and indeed on the amp used).

J.N. posted:

Some big ones, some small ones and some medium sized ones. Rooms are an acoustic lottery in my experience, rarely following any rules. 

Spot on J.N. I came home last weekend with a pair of speakers that sounded tonally well-balanced in the dealer's room. A heavily damped room probably 50% larger than my spartanly treated listening room. Got the speakers home and viola, where's the bass? Nothing wrong with the speakers, did plenty of repositioning, just not a match in my room.

There's a tenet in real estate value that it's all about three factors; location, location, and location. I'd say the same applies to speakers and the only location to evaluate them is in your own room.

Missing bass with speakers/system known tone perfectly capable is likely to be due to cancellations in the listening room. The real solution of course is room treatment, something that is rarely considered as much a part of a system as the hardware.

Of course, not all domestic environments lend themselves to proper treatment, especially when rooms are multi purpose, and many practical and aesthetic considerations can limit what can be done. Still, it seems strange with the amounts spent on audiophile hifi gear that room treatment often does not get similar serious consideration - an elephant in many rooms!

Innocent Bystander posted:

Missing bass with speakers/system known tone perfectly capable is likely to be due to cancellations in the listening room. The real solution of course is room treatment, something that is rarely considered as much a part of a system as the hardware.

Of course, not all domestic environments lend themselves to proper treatment, especially when rooms are multi purpose, and many practical and aesthetic considerations can limit what can be done. Still, it seems strange with the amounts spent on audiophile hifi gear that room treatment often does not get similar serious consideration - an elephant in many rooms!

Completely agree with your thoughts on room treatment IB, except that low bass in my room is generally reinforced. I get constructive interference of bass waves rather than cancellation - standing waves and excitation of room nodes. I have some small bass traps that do justice to mid bass clean-up, but need to get some fatter traps that will treat the mid-40 Hz range and their multiples/divisors.

Joe - small DIY advice if I may, before you invest in professional bass-traps:
Try taking some cushions or a lossly rolled up blanket and put them behind the speakers. This will emulate a bass trap to see if this is what the room needs.

It’s a practical thing that we do in a rehearsal (and a recording) studio - I have a ‘small’ rig of MesaBoogie bass speakers in 3 cabinets  (1 x 15”, 2 x 10” and 4 x 10”) running off several bass amps. The only way to tame that beast was to put a rolled up carpet behind it, in a corner