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Speakers for good sound in a bad room.

dimettry

dimettry

New Member
A lot of people have a room in which it is impossible to install speakers in the right way with normal distances to the front wall and side walls. Even if you have a good listening room, you may have a bedroom or a TV room where it is not possible to install speakers with spare space.
But at the same time, I really want to have a good hi-fi sound, preferably with the entire frequency range. For example, tower speakers that can be placed close to the front wall or in a corner.
This topic is very poorly covered. I would like to create a place where you can collect recommendations and tips on the selection of speakers.
 
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And in the first comment, I would like to ask for advice about speakers for my TV room( 4,5m x 6m). The speakers stand against the wall 4.5 but the door takes 80cm from the side. I am looking for tower speakers that can be placed close to the wall, a maximum of 10 cm from the wall, and one of the speakers will stand in the corner by the window.

I've read and watched a lot of reviews on youtube, but I'm not sure I can make the right choice, moreover, often only those columns whose marketing spends money on it are considered.

As I understand it, for installation next to a wall, it is better to use speakers with a phase inverter opening down or forward or completely closed type.

While I'm thinking, would it be good to use the polk audio K700 in such conditions? I have also heard that the klipsch A8000 II, despite the exits from the rear, can be placed close to the wall. but I'm not sure that it will work well. maybe you should look at the triangle bro9 (bro 10 will appear soon) or look towards the klh model5 (but it is confusing that after enthusiastic reviews all reviewers somehow dislike it, they also need a subwoofer, which increases the price and the frequency range will not be so smooth). my budget is 1500-2500 per pair. or if there are very good options that are worth it, I'm willing to buy used ones on the same budget.

I'm building a system from scratch so that the amplifier and dac will be selected based on the speakers. for example, for the polk r700, I'm thinking of taking the yamaha 1200 and holo audio Cian 2.

by sound, I like a surround sound with a slight color towards an enlarged body with a forward pitch and with slightly crossed out vocals. the upper frequencies are quite a bit softened but detailed.

This is a very big problem by genre, as the music is very different from EDM to symphony orchestras from rock to reggae.

Recommend which speakers you should pay attention to for such conditions .
I live in Barcelona. Unfortunately, the opportunity to try out speakers at home is not very developed here. For example, the klh model 5 can only be bought without returning to the store and you cannot listen to it because there is no sample in the stores.
 
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dimettry said:
A lot of people have a room in which it is impossible to install speakers in the right way with normal distances to the front wall and side walls. Even if you have a good listening room, you may have a bedroom or a TV room where it is not possible to install speakers with spare space.
.. I would like to create a place where you can collect recommendations and tips on the selection of speakers.
Click to expand...

dimettry said:
.. I would like to ask for advice about speakers for my TV room( 4,5m x 6m). The speakers stand against the wall 4.5 but the door takes 80cm from the side. I am looking for tower speakers that can be placed close to the wall, a maximum of 10 cm from the wall, and one of the speakers will stand in the corner by the window.
Click to expand...

Bon Dia y Bienvinedo @dimettry

I see you just joined AK today so here's hoping you enjoy your time here.

Speaker placement plays a big part in any set up in any room and is one of those things where you'll want to experiment with, other things you might try is what is called "toeing in" speakers which would be separate but in addition to wall/corner placement

If you're not aware here's an explanation

www.stereonet.com

Speaker "Toe" - What's It All About?

An easy to implement tweak that requires nothing more than the ability to listen for particular changes, and then decide what you like better.
www.stereonet.com www.stereonet.com
 
Check out PMC speakers - maybe Prodigy 5 if you want to buy new. These floorstanders can produce a ludicrously good sound and extreme bass extension for the size of the box, and transmission line speakers to me have always been easy to place in a room.

Alternatively (I know you wanted floorstanding but trust me) Klipsch The Nines. They are an active speaker that have a clever app that allows you to tweak the sound. I have heard these recently in a large room like yours and they are excellent in every respect.

Plenty of reviews online for both of these and they will play anything you throw at them superbly
 
dimettry said:
A lot of people have a room in which it is impossible to install speakers in the right way with normal distances to the front wall and side walls. Even if you have a good listening room, you may have a bedroom or a TV room where it is not possible to install speakers with spare space.
But at the same time, I really want to have a good hi-fi sound, preferably with the entire frequency range. For example, tower speakers that can be placed close to the front wall or in a corner.
This topic is very poorly covered. I would like to create a place where you can collect recommendations and tips on the selection of speakers.
Click to expand...
What about headphones?
 
A speaker I haven't personally heard in person, but is supposed to sound it's best against a wall or corner is the Ohm Walsh 2. They are on my watchlist
 
It would be nice if speaker selection could simply broken down by room size and a variety of common factors. The truth of it is that there are so many different variables I don't think it is really possible with the information that the OP has given to provide specific speaker recommendations. It is true that some speakers are designed to specifically be close to the wall but they are few and far between and often at the sacrifice of some other aspect of sound staging.

My recommendation to the OP is to first learn about proper speaker placement and all that that entails. This will help you learn what is possible for your space in achieving the best speaker placement. Once you have that information you will have some idea what speakers you can eliminate from your speaker selection such as whether it is rear ported, a dipole speaker etc. Once you have streamlined your search a bit then look for reviews of speakers that are in your budget. Most quality reviews will talk about where the reviewers placed the speaker in the room and why. This can help you decide if where they placed the speaker makes sense for your room based on what you learned about speaker placement and the sound you are trying to achieve. Once you have found a few candidates then see if the manufacturer allows for you to listen to the speakers on a trial basis that allows you to send them back if you are not satisfied. This will help you decide on a speaker but also test whether what you have determined to be the proper speaker placement based on your room is a accurate.
 
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Your room size is fine for large corner speakers, or perhaps one corner speaker as was done in mono days. Speakers are spaced out in rooms to avoid reflections as the amount of direct and reflected sound matters greatly to our hearing. One other solution is to put speakers in corners and to control beamwidth with (often) waveguides or horns. There are designs and kits for corner speakers that might make the prospect economical if you are comfortable building your own (or having them built) and you could source components locally to avoid international shipment. It is also possible to invert and ceiling-mount smaller corner speakers if floor-corners are not available.
 
The most room-friendly cone and dome speakers i've encountered are Audio Solutions Italy. Their speakers are designed to be agnostic about room placement & just have the knack of sounding good in everyday living rooms. Their Overture and Figaro series speakers are good value also.
 
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Maybe some kind of multi-driver line array configured type speakers, which seem to be most SQ forgiving for a lot of difficult rooms.
And they also can disperse a quite wide sound field from where their placed in the room, plus can have a small foot print.
 
IMHO, any good speaker should work. Also, just my opinion, a good speaker should play all genres well.

The only room I have that isn't bad is my main listening room.

Bedroom is the worst. Head near the wall, speakers at differing heights, differing distance from side walls, etc. I've had all kinds of speakers from old, huge "bookshelf" speakers like KLH 5, AR-3a, Infinity RS-5a, etc. Also used smaller stand-mounts like ELAC B6.2, Klipsch RP-600m, and CSS Criton TD1x.

They all sounded acceptable, the CSS Criton was the best I have tried and lives there now.
 
Ross6860 said:
IMHO, any good speaker should work.
Click to expand...

Agreed! Room placement is important in frequency response, but unless it is noted in the specs/marketing, many mass market speakers are out of necessity designed to be placed in any room in any reasonable position. The best possible position is the best any buyer can do, and sometimes it isn't optimal. I would not be too concerned about speakers near the wall.

Perhaps one guideline is to get speakers that have flattish response. Then if you want to tune the sound with a DSP or equalizer it is easiest starting with a flatter curve. You can also tune the room with hard and soft acoustic treatments.

Those Polks will probably sound very good.
 
Perhaps you should approach the dilemma from a different direction rather than arbitrary speaker selection be more scientific in evaluation and correction. My main listing space is a difficult room as well and I got this software, free + $60 mic, and used it to find the best speaker placement in that space. Unfortunately the best placement would not work for me so there was a fair amount of testing and some placement compromise but the end result is literally a night and day difference. As this can be used with any speaker or placement I can see no downside, at least not for me.

REW features and screenshots

REW is free software for measuring and analysing room, loudspeaker and device responses
www.roomeqwizard.com

 
I think look local on cl and FB marketplace, find something interesting, save some coin, start there perhaps? Starting with speakers and then looking for appropriate amplification has been the way for me
 
magnumJW said:
I think look local on cl and FB marketplace, find something interesting, save some coin, start there perhaps? Starting with speakers and then looking for appropriate amplification has been the way for me
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Check out some of the smaller A/D/S speakers.

I used L310-AW speakers for my son's 5-channel gaming setup. These are small speakers, with a very nice sound. Even at loud volumes.

Hide a nice powered 10-inch subwoofer, and you might be surprised at the final sound.
 
^ I'm not sure about CL I'm just guessing though but FB Marketplace is more then likely World Wide so could be a good option.
 
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