Minimum room size for full-range floorstanders?

Belated thanks to all for all the very helpful replies.

As events seem to be transpiring, I may in fact end up with a completely different set of room challenges since I might be converting a double garage space into my guitar/HiFi room. A proper man cave around 19’ square. Walls are nice and solid, Oak frame and Brick, the same as the rest of the 1930’s era house and the upper floor above the garage has already been converted some decades ago to have a bedroom and en-suite which is accessed by a seperate stair case from within the main house, the Garage block being integrated with the house and could be accessed by building a door through from the Kitchen.

I would probably plan to build another solid wall with cupboard space built in to eliminate the square footprint and end up with 19’ x 16’ or so. The biggest challenge may be ceiling height. I didn’t measure it, but I think it is below 7’, so on the low side, but then again, not as low as many period cottage living rooms, so I’m hoping won’t be a major issue. 

I am excited to have this great chance to create a pretty bespoke room with few of the normal compromises necessary in a Sitting Room. Looking forward to it!

Kevin

Dynaudio has a nice video about speaker placement. I would suggest taking a look at that. It has some very helpful tips and doesn't seem to think speaker size and room size really matters at least in most instances. t's about placement. 

kevin J Carden posted:

Belated thanks to all for all the very helpful replies.

As events seem to be transpiring, I may in fact end up with a completely different set of room challenges since I might be converting a double garage space into my guitar/HiFi room. A proper man cave around 19’ square. Walls are nice and solid, Oak frame and Brick, the same as the rest of the 1930’s era house and the upper floor above the garage has already been converted some decades ago to have a bedroom and en-suite which is accessed by a seperate stair case from within the main house, the Garage block being integrated with the house and could be accessed by building a door through from the Kitchen.

I would probably plan to build another solid wall with cupboard space built in to eliminate the square footprint and end up with 19’ x 16’ or so. The biggest challenge may be ceiling height. I didn’t measure it, but I think it is below 7’, so on the low side, but then again, not as low as many period cottage living rooms, so I’m hoping won’t be a major issue. 

I am excited to have this great chance to create a pretty bespoke room with few of the normal compromises necessary in a Sitting Room. Looking forward to it!

Kevin

That sounds a fantastic solution! A decent size room, and your shortening in one dimension to prevent it being square is a good idea. Low ceiling isn’t necessarily an issue per se, but it does decrease the time delay of the early reflections. If it is a dedicated listening room, then you presumably also have some reasonable scope for room treatment, and if it were me I would do that to make it into a really great room. Is sound insulation from room above important? If so then a double layer of plasterboard on the ceiling can help, sealing all gaps around both layers, as can filling the gaps between ceiling joists with high density mineral wool. Of course more sophisticated soundproofing is possible if more effective isolation is necessary. 

IB, thankfully there’s no need to be too worried about the bedroom above, so I’m ok on that score. I should be able to acoustically treat within reason. The only real restriction will be that the room must be ready to be easily restored to a ‘normal’ room with little fuss - in other words no strange, irreversible structural strangeness! Personally, I’d also like it to look reasonably normal and pleasing to the eye rather than sacrifice all aesthetic appeal for the sonics. 

Heard the larger PMC floor standers including Fact at an open demonstration at my dealer in both a large and small room. Both rooms very good (I purchased 20 24, cost constraints). PMC speakers seem to be quite tolerant of room and wall position. Equally, only my opinion, very good when placed close to wall or further away. Need to have your friendly dealer demonstrate a variety of suitable candidates from a number of manufacturers. Enjoy.

Recently had to go through a similar migration, taking the PMC 20.23s out of the 16x10' room where they were superb and into a nearly square 11x10 room, with wooden floors. It's dreadful, 2 months on and it just doesn't work - there's a boxiness and a boomy dominant bass that's just dreadful at any kind of volume. It doesn't help that it's more office than living space but with expected changes to come later this year I can live with it for now. But my experience is that bigger floorstanders in small rooms don't work, even when accepting that the 23s aren't actually that big.

Diapasons are weird in many ways - one of which is they really don't seem to care much about room size, though you obviously don't want them too close to corners. Mine are in an L-shaped room that according to the estate agents measures 23'10" x 11'3" and fire across the room. You're welcome to pop round for a listen if it's easy for you to get down Brighton way.

Michael_B. posted:

Diapasons are weird in many ways - one of which is they really don't seem to care much about room size, though you obviously don't want them too close to corners. Mine are in an L-shaped room that according to the estate agents measures 23'10" x 11'3" and fire across the room. You're welcome to pop round for a listen if it's easy for you to get down Brighton way.

Very kind offer Mike. I do want to listen to Diapasons at some point after (and if!) the move is complete. If it does go through, I’ll be living within an hour of you, so I may very well get in touch sometime around May/June if that’s ok. If I end up with a 19x16’ listening room there might be no excuse not to fulfill a long held itch to have Diapasons. I’ve exclusively used Shahinian’s for the past 25 years and a couple of years ago traded my old Hawks for new Obelisk 2’s only because my current room suited the latter better. I’ve only once and quite briefly heard Diapasons - in the early 90’s at Graham’s HiFi in Islington the day after Richard Shahinian himself had set the system up for a group demo that I was sadly unable to attend. I’m not sure that room allowed the Diapasons to be at their best, but there were definitely some glimpses of greatness on some of the Orchestral pieces.

Thanks again,

Kevin

kevin J Carden posted:

Michael_B. posted:

Diapasons are weird in many ways - one of which is they really don't seem to care much about room size, though you obviously don't want them too close to corners. Mine are in an L-shaped room that according to the estate agents measures 23'10" x 11'3" and fire across the room. You're welcome to pop round for a listen if it's easy for you to get down Brighton way.

Very kind offer Mike. I do want to listen to Diapasons at some point after (and if!) the move is complete. If it does go through, I’ll be living within an hour of you, so I may very well get in touch sometime around May/June if that’s ok. If I end up with a 19x16’ listening room there might be no excuse not to fulfill a long held itch to have Diapasons. I’ve exclusively used Shahinian’s for the past 25 years and a couple of years ago traded my old Hawks for new Obelisk 2’s only because my current room suited the latter better. I’ve only once and quite briefly heard Diapasons - in the early 90’s at Graham’s HiFi in Islington the day after Richard Shahinian himself had set the system up for a group demo that I was sadly unable to attend. I’m not sure that room allowed the Diapasons to be at their best, but there were definitely some glimpses of greatness on some of the Orchestral pieces.

Thanks again,

Kevin

You'd be very welcome to.  I've not heard the new Hawks, but I am told they can often be happier than Obelisks in small rooms because the bass drivers are further from the floor. I've also heard of Diapasons used successfully in very small rooms. Some of this is may be due to how the top unit is actually pretty compact with no large radiating surfaces. Anyway the offer's open for whenever you want. Just resurrect this thread.

Kevin,

my opinion only. First, a 6 x 4 mt. room is not what I call small, and in 24 sq. mt. almost anything reasonable (I mean anything costing in the four digits range) should sound good if placed along the longer wall and firing across the short one. Second, be very careful with large speakers: they bring more problems than solutions in my experience. If I wasn't married to a pair of S-400s, I'd probably have Harbeth M30.1s, because I've heard them sound very good with each and every amp I've tried them with, or perhaps with LS5/9s by Graham Audio. I would not spend money on bigger speakers. Vertical floor standers have appeared after the great season of HiFi was ended (but I'm talking of too many years ago).

Best

M

Max_B posted:

Vertical floor standers have appeared after the great season of HiFi was ended (but I'm talking of too many years ago).

Hi Max,

I’m interested to know what you regard as the great season of hifi? 

Taking a vertical floor stander as meaning something taller than it is wide (?), they have been available in mainstream hifi since at least the mid 1960s, possibly earlier. The IMF monitors I had until just a couple of years ago dated back to circa 1970, and the height was by no means exceptional at that time. What did happen some years later was a fashion for standmount speakers...

Innocent Bystander posted:

Max_B posted:

Vertical floor standers have appeared after the great season of HiFi was ended (but I'm talking of too many years ago).

Hi Max,

I’m interested to know what you regard as the great season of hifi? 

Taking a vertical floor stander as meaning something taller than it is wide (?), they have been available in mainstream hifi since at least the mid 1960s, possibly earlier. The IMF monitors I had until just a couple of years ago dated back to circa 1970, and the height was by no means exceptional at that time. What did happen some years later was a fashion for standmount speakers...

 

You're probably right, but I'm too lazy to start an accurate research. Thanks for the clarification, but I don't consider things like Klipsch or giant Japanese multi driver boxes 'floor standers': they were simply too big to be put elsewhere than on the floor. And all the rest was called 'bookshelf', even those things too little to sit on the floor and too large to stand on a stool, like the AR3s or even the LSTs. Then came little things that had been designed to fit a small van, with a bump in the mid-bass and made to reproduce 90% speech, which were taken, put in the middle of the room on ugly iron stands and modern 'HiEnd' began: with mini speakers thought for anything but domestic music reproduction.

To clarify my improper use of words (which, I'm sure, didn't so much stir your interest as your itch to correct me, and apologies if that isn't true), what now are called 'floor standers' are just bookshelf speakers with a prolongation to reach the ground and give 'bass' with 13 cm. woofers. But when I see a pic of JBL Paragons or Pioneer 1240s I am referring to the great season of HiFi. And, to further clarify your very  correct statement that stand mount speakers' fashion came later, I add that a further fashion for floor standers followed: Sonus Faber – to quote a famous name –didn't even conceive to build floor standers until the mid-nineties, with the Grand Piano. For 10 years, they had only made stand mounts. Now, their only stand mount is a crazy thing shaped like an alien, small like a cat and costing €8,000. Obviously, with some steel plate somewhere, to shine in the true connoisseurs' sunny mansions.

M.

I guess you would call quad electrostatics floor standers - so that is 1957.

Max, it wasn’t an itch to correct (I don’t presume to do so to  people who I recognise may not be naticpve English speakers), rather it was an uncertainty as to what was the distinction of a vertical floorstander, being a term I hadn’t heard before. I did wonder if it had some significance, maybe hinting at tall narrow though often deep boxes tgat are the current trend, whereas decades ago they tended to be wider but less deep.

What I was remembering from the 1960s  was speakers like Tannoy and Radford and then IMF, followed in the 1970s by the likes of Monitor Audio, and others I don’t recall, when the top end of most decent manufacturers’ ranges did tend to be floorstanders. But then, I predate the ‘bookshelf’ era, which seemed to take hold in the mid 70s, then leading to the standmount fashion that I think started in the 80s.

XTZ Spirit 11 for comparative peanuts,  Amphion Argon 3LS or 3S for 'not peanuts'  worth considering?