Is It a Bad Idea To Put Big Speakers In a Small Room?

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

Exactly.

That's the point. Only solution is headphones for OCD.

 

[pozz]

@Alice of Old Vincennes Your sarcasm is unhelpful.

@Cosmic_Error Small rooms have a transition region around several hundred Hz. Below it the room dominates frequency response. Above it the speakers do. The transition region itself is a mix of both. The smaller the room, the higher the transition region, and the more difficult it will be to get good sound out of it because the gross room effects will determine more and more of what you hear.

Small rooms also limit what you can do with speaker positioning and where you can sit. Since speakers radiate sound all around (but not evenly), the radiation bouncing from the sidewalls and furniture to your listening position may be unpleasantly loud or highly uneven if the setup is not symmetrical along the room boundaries. This can bias the soundstage or muddy it.

To be clear, 12 inches of insulation will do nothing for clearing up bass unevenness.

Now for your question. There's no problem with getting large speakers for a small room. But it would probably be more efficient to have really good small monitors and supplement them with subs. Finding an optimal position for subs and using EQ will solve many issues. If subs are inconvenient or outside your budget, or you just like big speakers, that's fine too. Take care in positioning and EQ. And even if you don't want to deal with that, sufficiently well-designed speakers will still sound good.

 

[brimble]

I have big Monitor Audio speakers in a small room through a combination of history and laziness and (relative!) poverty, and they sound just fine. For action movies I have to turn the bass down; for music they don't even need EQ. I had to be careful about placement, but I guess I would have had to be careful with placement anyway.

They LOOK a bit out of proportion of course.

 

[Chromatischism]

Best part about being unmarried is I don't have to explain ridiculous purchases to a spouse. Any good suggestions for about $1500 per pair of speakers? That's what I have to spend on speakers right now.

Perfect, same here. I buy what I want

If you are nearfield, I recommend Genelec 8030c.

Otherwise, I recommend Buchardt S400.

Both measure extremely well and sound superb.

 

[Chromatischism]

One problem with really large speakers like the Utopia in a too-small room is that one needs to be farther away from them for the drivers to integrate together and not sound like separate woofer/midrange/tweeter point sources. Bookshelf sized speakers and similar towers should work well in a smaller room. Ideally, you would want enough space so that the speakers can be well out into the room, away from the side walls, and the listener out from the rear wall to achieve the best imaging if that's important to you.

This is true. I think I just tried to find the most ridiculous example

 

[valerianf]

In my life, whatever was the room size, I always got a pair of 3 ways speakers with woofers of 8 to 10 inches diameter.
Why going small when you can have a big sound?
But I understand that for esthetic/volume/budget smaller 2 ways speakers may be preferred.
In my system the 2 ways speakers are the surrounds.

 

[Cosmic_Error]

@Alice of Old Vincennes Your sarcasm is unhelpful.

@Cosmic_Error Small rooms have a transition region around several hundred Hz. Below it the room dominates frequency response. Above it the speakers do. The transition region itself is a mix of both. The smaller the room, the higher the transition region, and the more difficult it will be to get good sound out of it because the gross room effects will determine more and more of what you hear.

Small rooms also limit what you can do with speaker positioning and where you can sit. Since speakers radiate sound all around (but not evenly), the radiation bouncing from the sidewalls and furniture to your listening position may be unpleasantly loud or highly uneven if the setup is not symmetrical along the room boundaries. This can bias the soundstage or muddy it.

To be clear, 12 inches of insulation will do nothing for clearing up bass unevenness.

Now for your question. There's no problem with getting large speakers for a small room. But it would probably be more efficient to have really good small monitors and supplement them with subs. Finding an optimal position for subs and using EQ will solve many issues. If subs are inconvenient or outside your budget, or you just like big speakers, that's fine too. Take care in positioning and EQ. And even if you don't want to deal with that, sufficiently well-designed speakers will still sound good.

I kind of just want big speakers lol. I also want subs though

 

[Cosmic_Error]

I have big Monitor Audio speakers in a small room through a combination of history and laziness and (relative!) poverty, and they sound just fine. For action movies I have to turn the bass down; for music they don't even need EQ. I had to be careful about placement, but I guess I would have had to be careful with placement anyway.

They LOOK a bit out of proportion of course.

I'm totally OK with them sounding bad with movies, this is only for music.

 

[Chromatischism]

In my life, whatever was the room size, I always got a pair of 3 ways speakers with woofers of 8 to 10 inches diameter.
Why going small when you can have a big sound?
But I understand that for esthetic/volume/budget smaller 2 ways speakers may be preferred.
In my system the 2 ways speakers are the surrounds.

A good 2-way with consistent directivity + subs = the best imaging and bass

But I agree if one wants more SPL especially in the mid and upper bass then more woofage gets you there.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

@Alice of Old Vincennes Your sarcasm is unhelpful.

@Cosmic_Error Small rooms have a transition region around several hundred Hz. Below it the room dominates frequency response. Above it the speakers do. The transition region itself is a mix of both. The smaller the room, the higher the transition region, and the more difficult it will be to get good sound out of it because the gross room effects will determine more and more of what you hear.

Small rooms also limit what you can do with speaker positioning and where you can sit. Since speakers radiate sound all around (but not evenly), the radiation bouncing from the sidewalls and furniture to your listening position may be unpleasantly loud or highly uneven if the setup is not symmetrical along the room boundaries. This can bias the soundstage or muddy it.

To be clear, 12 inches of insulation will do nothing for clearing up bass unevenness.

Now for your question. There's no problem with getting large speakers for a small room. But it would probably be more efficient to have really good small monitors and supplement them with subs. Finding an optimal position for subs and using EQ will solve many issues. If subs are inconvenient or outside your budget, or you just like big speakers, that's fine too. Take care in positioning and EQ. And even if you don't want to deal with that, sufficiently well-designed speakers will still sound good.

I guess I just like big speakers.

 

[Cosmic_Error]

I guess I just like big speakers.

Me too...

 

[Willem]

The Schroeder frequency of a room will be higher the smaller the room, and for this rather small room it would be about 250 Hz. So below that frequency you should expect room mode problems. Of course, you can equalize the peaks, but this will only work for one listening position, and the higher the frequency that has to be equalized the narrower the equalized listening position.
So in my view equalization is a great idea in larger rooms, but becomes problematic in smaller ones. I think the only escape is to use multiple (preferably more than two) small subwoofers, and equalize those. In that case the equalization is effective over a much wider area.

 

[Mashcky]

My listening room is 20'L x 10'W x 7.5'H, so a similar volume to OP and I had no issue after equalization with the two 18" subwoofers I just made. I don't see why three-way speakers would be any worse, especially since my subs are placed in the corners and tower spears will more likely be placed out a foot or two into the room and closer to the center of a wall. Room nodes definitely extend above 100hz but the worst offenders were below that. I'll take some measurements later maybe.

 

[Chromatischism]

I don't see why three-way speakers would be any worse

Probably if someone has to sit close to them or if there are nearby walls where sound will be heard or reflected before fully converging.

 

[Zek]

Big speakers in a small room - no problem!

 

[oldsysop]

The only bad idea is to use small speakers