Musing on what I’d like from my Atom (which we use in a large L-shaped kitchen/dining room and which sits atop a dresser), I spent some time researching speakers for ‘room-filling’ sound the other day. When we play music in this room, it’s never an audiophile ‘listening session’, there’s always things going on; no ‘sweet spot’ required, in fact quite the opposite.
What a rabbit-hole!
Bose 901s - seemingly sneered at by audiophiles.
Sonab OD-11 (and anything by Stig Carlsson)
Shahinians, duevels, omnidirectionals (although I think I’d want bookshelf speakers if I ever went down this route)
Do any Naim owners achieve ‘room-filling’ sound? What (bookshelf) speakers do you use?
What does “room filling” mean? I take it to mean loud in all parts of the room. If so relatively efficient speakers are called for. And if you want the sound to be full range, including low bass, but still be controlled by the Nova, then floorstanders not bookshelf soeakers but ones presenting not too difficult a losd so the Nova can c trol them adequately (or a sub).
When I’ve heard them Audionote gave a good impression of scale but need to be near a wall or preferably a corner. They’re not all an outrageous price if you stay away from the silver conductors or alnico magnets and they’re easy to drive.
Apologies, crossed Nova and Atom. I know you said bookshelf, but if you room filling means full range than bookshelves won’t achieve it, unless a sub is used as I also mentioned.
Only you know what you mean by “room filling”! It seems odd to want others to give their interpretation… (It is not a term I would use myself, but if I did it would be as I surmised in my first oost.)
I had a pair of these and confess to loving them. I had them on the end of a Linn system. While they are not hi-fi in the truest sense, the scale they deliver is something that no other speaker can even come close too. And they are easy to drive as they use an active single point crossover (which they called an Active Equalizer just to be contrary) . However, that crossover has to sit between either a pre and power amp or between in a tape loop with the tape monitor selected and I don’t think that is possible with an Atom. Plus they are discontinued as Bose have now left the hi-fi speaker market some years back to focus on purely lifestyle and pro-audio.
Anyway, any speaker can be room filling depending on the size of the room. Being used to the Bose sound which largely came from their use transmission lines, I found PMC to be to my liking. Something like a Twenty5.21 would be easy to drive and produces a big sound.