Apologies for yet another speaker pairing question.
I recently purchased an Atom for my living room.
The room is approx 6m x 4m (atom in middle of 6m end so speakers need to be at the same end)
Like a lot of guys on this forum, my better half wants the speakers to be as “compact as possible”
Ideally, I don’t want to use stands if possible.
I’ve been considering the Neat Iotas as they are so small as well as the Kef LS50 Metas. (max spend is approx £1,000)
So my question is are these models underpowered for the room size (I’m happy to add a compact sub at a later date to fill any gaps in bass)
If they are, can you advise alternatives please?
Thanks in advance.
I friend of mine has the Neat Iotas with his Atom. If I was being ultra critical I’d say the Atom struggles a bit to get the Iotas to sing properly. It’s not that they are bad but he’s been contemplating a speaker change to get closer to the sound he’s looking for. He wants a more forward, involving and musical sound. I think he’s going to try some N-Sats?
Trouble is that a lot of these high quality mini-monitor speakers do need a lot of power to work properly. I still recall my amazement when I connected a pair of 135’s to a pair of Linn Kan’s. Truly awesome!
Thanks, I hadn’t considered the N-Sats so will take a look.
6x4m is a reasonable size - heard good reports about the Kef meta’s but I have iota Alpha’s - boy do they create a big sound, very good with qute and not disgraced on my 552/300!
Speakers are so room dependant - do the home demo if you can as the way speakers interact with different rooms makes it impossible to make recommendations per se.
My room is similar size, just different dims, 8x3m. I have Kef Ls50 (not meta) with two Rel 5ti subs - I could easily recommend this setup. However, only with a sub(s) - LS50 don’t have enough low end to fill the room of this size. Listening to LS50s without the subs is just sad… You can get one sub first then add another one later.
Linn 109 on the end of my Unitilite. Sounds very good, nice match. These are wall mounted on Linn braket.
Also Neat Iota, very lovely, the alphas didn’t work in this room, first floor living room with boom box construction.
Room is 16x12ft max.
I have Atom with wall-mounted Neat Iotas in my small office. The combination works extremely well to my ears, but you are not going to get stomach-rumbling bass, especially in a larger room like yours, so budgeting for a sub could be worth while. As suggested by others, you might also want to try Iota Alphas — they’re tiny for floorstanders, so might be domestically acceptable. As always, if you can home demo, please do so.
Roger
Really helpful guys thanks.
As a lot of people have pointed out on this forum demoing seems a must as every room is different.
I didn’t get on with Iotas at all when I demoed them with the Atom also tried the Iota Alphas didn’t really like those either. Treble was nice but they just lacked everywhere else and where just an unexciting listen, they might be suited to some kinds of music better but for mine they just didn’t float my boat at all. Funny enough didn’t like that SX3 either they sounded boxey to me. Maybe I just don’t like the Neat sound signature.
De gustibus non est disputandum
Roger
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