long time naim/linn user, previously lived in Victorian property, large rooms, high ceilings, suspended floors etc.
Moved to a new build and have two listening rooms available 5mx3.5m and 3.7mx3.7m both 2.4m high as other half has had enough of main reception rooms being full of stuff
I’ve got a guy coming to survey the rooms acoustically next week for room treatment as they sound awful at the moment but do I need to take a different approach? - can these systems sound good and can they “breathe” in small rooms? I really don’t know as I’ve listened to them for 30years in the old place!.
Speakers are going to be key I would have thought. I run scdr/252/ 250 in a small room with Linn kans and need a sub at low volumes. Another similar sized room I have sc/82/135’s into Spendor A5’s. The Spendors are fine at low to medium volumes, but att higher volumes I need to open the french windows to release the pressure otherwise they can boom.
I would image the smaller room could be a problem with room modes - not sure you can fix that with acoustic treatment - I’m currently looking at using a sub to help reduce the problem although I don’t think it will fix it. Ask the gut about potential issues. The issues usually occur in low frequency, mine are around 40Hz - 55Hz. Some more knowledgeable people of this forum can hopefully chip in. Having said that I’ve been enjoying my music in same room for years. Good luck.
Neither 5m x 3.5 nor 3.5 x3.7 are small, more like around average size lounges (for Britain). Square is not a good shape for a music room as you get the same standing waves in those directions, exaggerating the peaks and troughs. So if it was me I would pick the 3.5 x 5. I have previously very happily used IMF RSPM full range floor standers in a room of about that size, though one end had a bay window so it wasn’t an equal length right across. Of course depending how you arrange it, if the speakers are close to the side walls, or listening position close to the wall behind, it would certainly benefit from acoustic treatment of near reflection points.
My lounge/music room is approximately 18’ x 12’ which I would consider as an average UK size
I’m running a demo pair of ATC 19’s before my new ones arrive and absolutely no problems in my room
The first speakers I demoed were PMC Prodigy 5’s and I thought they were terrible and sounded boring and definitely not worth the £2k asking price so then I tried ATC SCM11’s which were fantastic so next were the 19’s and I decided they were exactly what I wanted sound wise
I used SL2s in my 3.6m wide and 4.5m long room and they were brilliant. The rest of the system was a CDS3 and 552/300. I had them firing across, with about 10cm behind them. They could go to deafening volumes with total control. The floor is concrete and the walls are all concrete blocks, which doubtless helped. I’d suspect the larger of your two options would be better, as square rooms can have issues. But who knows?
Thanks for all the responses - I’ve just measured the rooms again as was relying on builders blurb and the rectangular room is actually 5mx3.25m so a little smaller that I thought but maybe still usable - the more I read about square rooms the less I like the idea trying to resolve the LF issues
It can work and work very very well but you need to choose appropriate speakers.
It’s likely in small room infinite baffle (sealed) speakers will sound better and provide a deep bass response using room reinforcement without excessive lumpiness. This is far beyond the typical -3dB bandwidth quoted. Sealed speakers fall off more slowly than ported speakers that have a steep cut off.
One things for sure speakers for a large room won’t work in a small room and vice versa.
I have roughly 5 x 3.5 m in a non uniform room. I find ls3/5a and variant speakers work well… I also use bass sinks in the corners behind speakers. I have speakers pointing up the longest dimension.
With small rooms you need to be mindful of wall reflections as well as ceiling.. assuming you use underlay and carpet. I use natural plaster as opposed to skimmed plasterboard on ceiling which seems to work well. Pictures on walls helps, ie anything to disrupt smooth uniform surfaces as well as soft furnishings.
That’s interesting Simon as usually the advice is to fire across the shortest room dimension I think - my room would certainly aesthetically work better firing down the room so your findings are interesting - I’ll report back once the guy has visited next week…..
Never quite understood with those dimensions why one advocated firing across.. you just can’t get good stereo depth. If you sit around half way to two thirds down it seems to work well. My house is older being about a century old so uses traditional building materials with a hard concrete and slate floor (which has underlay and carpet placed on top) which perhaps helps. My listening room is irregular but relatively small.
This is a very pertinent thread; homes are getting smaller, and perhaps building quality is poorer. As has been pointed out by @Innocent_Bystander its the squareness of rooms that is the problem.
I am fortunate in having an irregular shaped small living room with solid floors and walls, and a low ceiling. Active SBLs and now Ovator 600s sound excellent with very little treatment (carpets and soft furnishings). However, when I lived in a wooden box (timber framed square house) my system sounded very neutral and not very engaging. The high ceilings were problematic; a slight improvement came when I moved the speakers to fire down the long room axis as they had a brick wall behind them rather than the timber sandwich of the other walls.
