Does room size matters vs floorstander?

[DjOverdose]

Hi. I just want to get an advise regarding floorstander and roomsize. Currently I am using a rp160 bookshelfs in my house. It's like only 1' away from the wall. Room Dimension is estimated at 11'W x 19' L x 8' H. It's a multipurpose area. Untreated. The bookshelfs are only 2.5M apart from each other. I can't move them further anymore. 

 

I am planning to get an Rp280f as an upgrade but afraid that the speaker might just be too big for the room and will produce too much bass? Or should I just consider getting the 260F?

 

Im powering the speakers with a custom made tube preamp and a custom made kt120 power amp. 

[garyrc]

5 hours ago, DjOverdose said:

Hi. I just want to get an advise regarding floorstander and roomsize. Currently I am using a rp160 bookshelfs in my house. It's like only 1' away from the wall. Room Dimension is estimated at 11'W x 19' L x 8' H. It's a multipurpose area. Untreated. The bookshelfs are only 2.5M apart from each other. I can't move them further anymore. 

 

I am planning to get an Rp280f as an upgrade but afraid that the speaker might just be too big for the room and will produce too much bass? Or should I just consider getting the 260F?

 

Im powering the speakers with a custom made tube preamp and a custom made kt120 power amp. 

 

I'd get the 280F. 

 

I once had Klipschorns in a smaller room.

 

I don't think you will get too much bass.  In fact, you will want to be sure to experiment to position the speakers for adequate bass.

 

Do you get enough SPL from your rp160s?  It may be a good thing they are only 1 foot from the wall, to maximize boundary gain.  With equal power and equal boundary and room gain, on paper, you would get about 2 dB more SPL than you have now if you change to the  280Fs, and bass that goes 11 Hz deeper (in this case, about 1/2 octave, I think).  Neither of these differences will sound overwhelming.

 

With that amp, it sounds like you are a purist. 

 

What kind of music do you listen to?

[DjOverdose]

Thanks for that. I like how the rp160 sound in the room. Bass is decent for a bookshelf. But I want to feel the bass from a bass drum when your listening to orchestra. 

 

What I'm afraid of is that the bass might drown the music considering it's really big for the room. Like a booming bass sound all over the room. 

 

Sorry I am not that technical when it comes To SPL and sorts though 8 get your point. 😀👌. 

 

I just want to have almost a pure analog sounding system. The only digital in my system is my CD player and Bluetooth receiver. I listen mostly to local. Alternatives, some Rock, jazz, Broadway and accustics. 

 

Tubes and klipsch really compliment each other.. 

[pzannucci]

Just experiment with position.  I would second the RP-280fs.

 

[wvu80]

Size matters, the bigger the better!  These CF-4's are in the Mancave, a converted small bedroom, maybe 12x15 and they sound pretty good.

 

Your AVR's room correction software such as Audyssey or you need to manually set them up for your room size needs to set them up properly and you are good to go.

 

[DjOverdose]

Wow.... thanks for the very positive response..... looks like my daughter will have no allowance for a few weeks.... hahaha just kidding. 

 

Will check on that audyssey  app you mentioned.

 

I guess Im good and all set. thank you very much! Big help! 

 

PS: Its really a good thing that despite the advent of Facebook, Forums like this still exist. you can never replace the information you get from forum based groups...

 

[bkevind]

That's a decent size room, I think the rp-280f will be great in there.  Is it a close room or open to the house?  You can/will get more bass reinforcement if it is a closed room, and of course based on placement.  Of course corner placement naturally reinforces bass, so you can experiment with placement for the desired result.

 

Audyssey comes with certain receivers, such as Denon and Marantz.  You might use other independent room correction / tuning software with a good mic.  The name of what you would need for that escapes me at the moment.  REQ wizard maybe?

[garyrc]

11 hours ago, wvu80 said:

Size matters, the bigger the better!  These CF-4's are in the Mancave, a converted small bedroom, maybe 12x15 and they sound pretty good.

 

Your AVR's room correction software such as Audyssey or you need to manually set them up for your room size needs to set them up properly and you are good to go.

 

 

10 hours ago, bkevind said:

That's a decent size room, I think the rp-280f will be great in there.  Is it a close room or open to the house?  You can/will get more bass reinforcement if it is a closed room, and of course based on placement.  Of course corner placement naturally reinforces bass, so you can experiment with placement for the desired result.

 

Audyssey comes with certain receivers, such as Denon and Marantz.  You might use other independent room correction / tuning software with a good mic.  The name of what you would need for that escapes me at the moment.  REQ wizard maybe?

 

It is REW (Room Eq Wizard).  It is FREE on line, but you need a calibrated microphone.  Probably still about $90.  Be sure to look at this  Getting Started With REW: A Step-by-Step Guide BEFORE BUYING A MIC.  The USB is probably the way to go.  I made the mistake of using a mic preamp at first, which wasn't flat.  

 

While I am a strong advocate of using Audyssey [properly and patiently] , your gear doesn't have it (unless a miracle has happened).  AFAIK, only Marantz and Denon have it.  The app will do you no good unless you have a [fairly new] preamp processor or AVR, with Audyssey XT32.

 

Here is the order in which I think you shoud proceed:

1. Experiment with various placements of your new speakers.  Be sure to try one position almost in the corners.
2. Put a carpet on the floor where the sound of the tweeter will bounce off the floor directly into your ears when you are sitting in the Main Listening Position (MLP).
3. At least minimally treat the room, in addition to using the area rug, checking the sound from the MLP with a variety of recordings.  Do not overtreat, and do not over deaden.  [Almost] nothing is as bad as an over-dead room.  Your bookshelves could come in handy.  A mixture -- random or artistic -- of books, spaces, and art objects can provide some natural diffusion and, and, in the case of the books themselves, absorption.  You want both. 
4. Use Audyssey, or other electronic room correction, if available, only AFTER experimenting with speaker positions and room treatment. 

 Some people who want "Purity" tend to be against electronic room correction.   Sometimes they think that by using "Pure Direct" or the like, avoiding tone controls, and any other kind of processing, they will get what the musicians wanted, or at least what the sound engineers heard.  Well, sometimes that might happen.  A stopped clock is right twice every 24 hours.  The trouble with that family of contentions is that the probability of hearing what was heard in the studio hovers around 0.  And if we're talking about hearing what the final mix sounded like, we might not want to hear it.  Marketers of recorded music and their executives have polices, and I suspect some of them don't like music.  They screw around with the sound, compressing dynamic range to allow for maximum recording level, altering tonal balance, often cutting bass and the highest overtones, while boosting the upper midrange, in the screech zone -- see the posts by Chris A on partially fixing all this by de-mastering.  Even with de-mastering, having a listening room that has been relieved of some of its anomalies, by treatment, and, IMO, by electronic room correction, is a plus.  I listen to a new recording part way through, then may start using tone controls to pull the balance into line, if it needs it.  All of this reinforces the concept that High Fidelity sound is faithful to the imagined original. 

 

Fortunately, orchestral music and jazz (my favorites) are not as prone to recording company fooling around as some of the other genres.   Oddly, Blu-ray movies are often surprisingly good.  I like SACD, but I suspect they have a good batting average because the engineers know audiophiles will be listening.

 

SPL means Sound Pressure Level, a physical measure, usually in dB, of intensity, what people incorrectly think of as "Loudness" or "Volume."  It can be weighted.  A weighting (dBA) is useful in industry to avoid blowing workers' ears off, but not much good for music, because it rolls off the bass.  Either C weighting or Unweighted is much more appropriate in measuring music levels.  "Real" loudness is a perceptual phenomenon that correlates rather imperfectly with SPL.  Music with a lot of bass, or reproduced with an objectionable amount of distortion may sound louder.  Volume originally meant just that.  How large a room or hall -- e.g., in cubic feet -- do you want to fill?  Moving to a room of large volume meant turning up the Volume control.

 

 
 

[pzannucci]

If you get boomy bass, stuff the ports.  If you ever move the speakers to someplace else, you may want any additional bass provided by the dual 8".

[dtel]

Yes room size matters, actually the bigger horns are better for a small room, a large horn can control a room better.

 

Just toe them in a little so there aimed a little away from the side wall. This is good with any speaker, you don't want the sound reflecting off the sidewall, as little as possible anyway.

[garyrc]

2 hours ago, dtel said:

Yes room size matters, actually the bigger horns are better for a small room, a large horn can control a room better.

 

Just toe them in a little so there aimed a little away from the side wall. This is good with any speaker, you don't want the sound reflecting off the sidewall, as little as possible anyway.

 

I agree.

 

Even with toe in, you may want to put an absorber on the nearby wall, 2 feet (or more) wide, starting where a yardstick placed flat across the front of the horn will touch the wall, and extending 2 feet farther into the room:

[pzannucci]

You shouldn't have a lot of problems with RP280f's though as stated absorption material used appropriately in any size room to kill resonances and reflections is definitely recommended.