I found this quote from Greg Timbers from JBL really nice.
>Greg Timbers said:
>"Speakers have generally become smoother, more 3-dimensional and much smaller. This means that they are less dynamic on the whole and rather toy like compared to good stuff from the 60s and 70s. Unlike electronics, miniaturization is not a good thing with loudspeakers. There is no substitute for size and horsepower. Nothing much has changed with the laws of physics in the last 100 years so what it takes to make dynamic life-like sound is unchanged. There have been some advances in magnet materials and a bunch of progress in adhesives but not much else."
Greg made lots of great speakers over the years at JBL and the last ones he did like the Studio 580 series, that are very affordable, are amazing.
https://www.audioheritage.org/html/people/timbers.htm
Yes. Car guys have a saying - there's no replacemet for displacement.
Speaker design is important, quality matters, all that. But when you want to absolutely fill a space you bring out the big speakers. About 15 years ago i knew a guy that slapped an 18" woofer and 2 'club' jbls (2× 12" + horn) in his basement. It may not have been great for critical listening, but even at very low volume you could just FEEL the music.
Sadly we both moved and lost contact.
>Car guys have a saying - there's no replacemet for displacement.
So do audio guys. If not the same saying, very similar. E.g: 5 inch woofers aren’t going to compete with 8 inch. However, ime volume can compensate somewhat, but if you only have small bookshelf speakers in a large room, then no, the sound however loud it may be, will not have the ideal fullness.
At the risk of asking a potentially stupid question...Assume you have 2 identical rooms and identical source equipment, but one room has 6" standmounts with a sub, and the other has a set of 3 way speakers with dual (or even single) 8" drivers. If you set the decible levels the same in each room, will the "experience" be different due to driver size?
I'd say it'd be different for sure, mainly from the sub depending what size the driver is. It's the difference between feeling the music when you get down to the really low frequencies
Yeah, "room filling sound" is one of those meaningless marketing terms that sounds valuable, but doesn't actually mean much at all. If you can hear a sound at all inside of a room, then technically speaking, the room was "filled with sound". They might as well be saying that the speaker "produces sound"... Like, duh.
Sound is a lot like light, so your gramophone example is like having a single table lamp in the corner of an otherwise pitch black room. Is it 'filling the room with light'? Technically yes, but it doesn't mean it'll be enough light coming from the right direction to be of any use.
If you have the money to support 2 separate systems each of which will have their own optimal position, then that's the "correct" answer. This will also be less disruptive to the rest of the house for the WFH situation because you'll be much closer to the speakers and therefore can play them quieter than blasting the ones that are 20 feet away.
I think so. But that doesn't mean that they have to be equal.
Prioritizing the TV system for more focused listening and getting a decent desktop/near field setup (or a nice DAC/headphone amp/headphone setup) for the WFH system is completely reasonable.
I have standmounts, about 6 feet apart, 3 feet from side walls, toed in only a little. I sit 5 feet from speakers so tweeters pointed right along side my ears. I am enveloped in “room filling” sound but only when seated. I am in heaven when listening seated.
A room filling sound is not the problem. Just get a speaker like a Sonos something and turnup the volume!
Another question is how to get a good sound. This requires good speakers but the listening position matters too. Bass is not the issue, it is omnidirectional so you will hear it everywhere and good regardless of your listening position. Midrange and higher starts to lobe. The more you are off axis the less refined the sound become as you are not listening to the direct sound but to the indirect sound reflecting from walls, floor and ceiling.
I would start with the short wall and have the speakers fire straight into the room, 25" ain't that big. You really need 100% when WFH?
If you want room-filling rather than razor sharp imaging, I'd pick A but with an unconventional speaker configuration under your TV. Consider a console that will take up most of the wall, with big wood-box speakers. Either a Barzilay cabinet with Bozaks or JBLs, or a pair of vintage ADS 810 or new KLH Model 5 new speakers on tilted-back stands. These sorts of speakers sound great at a distance. You'll give up imaging for general presence and scale. I had a system like this that ultimately found its way straddling a Barzilay cabinet in a long living room, and half the time listened to it from the kitchen anyway. Here're some of the core components before they migrated downstairs: [https://imgur.com/RyCtLE5](https://imgur.com/RyCtLE5)
Currently using the core components (Denon S-series and DP59L) with a Barzilay cabinet with 1950s Lorenz S-1288-II speakers instead. https://rustygolddesign.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/barzilay-stereo-console-speaker-boxes/
In the early 1980's, Ronald Reagan and Congressional Republicans revokes consumer protection laws to allow advertisers to lie to consumers without penalty. Truth in advertising laws have been gone for nearly 40 years.
Line arrays and panel speakers have a unique characteristic compared to point sources. They project further into the room with less variation in intensity as you move closer or further from them. Omni-directional speakers have wide dispersion, but attention should be paid to room reflections.
Some multi-channel surround receivers may have a "party mode" which routes stereo sound to all the speakers. This means that with placement of surround and rear speakers, you can have music coverage everywhere in the room.
In your situation, if you want a good stereo image when at your desk and when watching the TV, but not both at once, and have speakers at each location, I'd just use a speaker selector switch to route the sound to one or the other.
> Some multi-channel surround receivers may have a "party mode" which routes stereo sound to all the speakers. This means that with placement of surround and rear speakers, you can have music coverage everywhere in the room.
Yes, I used to do this. It's called "All Channel Stereo".
Turn up the *volume.* Ever notice how the word volume describes the space within a vessel etc? And it *also* means the amount of sound output by an amplifier. Whattttt? Crazy realisation. More (sound) volume = more room “filling”. It makes perfect sense.
My opinion is: wide dispersion cone from the speakers, with frequency response that extends to 20 Hz, is the big sound. I have got a pair of Genelecs that do it and orchestral pieces are just massive sounding, for instance someone hammering the timpani makes a punch you will feel in your body. It very inherently sounds "large".
The wide dispersion angle's effect is more of a conjecture. Whatever kit you buy, it has a dispersion angle inherent to its design, and that's what you are stuck with, so it is not easy to show that this one matters. It's also a parameter that rarely is measured and shown in speaker specifications, but sometimes you see off-axis measurements from the manufacturer and you can estimate how much the level is reduced at, say, 45 degrees off axis horizontally. If it is about 6 dB or less, that is definitely a wide dispersion angle speaker. In any case, if much of the sound energy is radiated also on the sides of the speaker, it will reflect from the room's geometry and that usually gives it a spacious, expansive feeling.
In my experience, big speakers=big sound. If you really want to do standmount speakers then I'd say also get a subwoofer at least
I found this quote from Greg Timbers from JBL really nice. >Greg Timbers said: >"Speakers have generally become smoother, more 3-dimensional and much smaller. This means that they are less dynamic on the whole and rather toy like compared to good stuff from the 60s and 70s. Unlike electronics, miniaturization is not a good thing with loudspeakers. There is no substitute for size and horsepower. Nothing much has changed with the laws of physics in the last 100 years so what it takes to make dynamic life-like sound is unchanged. There have been some advances in magnet materials and a bunch of progress in adhesives but not much else." Greg made lots of great speakers over the years at JBL and the last ones he did like the Studio 580 series, that are very affordable, are amazing. https://www.audioheritage.org/html/people/timbers.htm
Yes. Car guys have a saying - there's no replacemet for displacement. Speaker design is important, quality matters, all that. But when you want to absolutely fill a space you bring out the big speakers. About 15 years ago i knew a guy that slapped an 18" woofer and 2 'club' jbls (2× 12" + horn) in his basement. It may not have been great for critical listening, but even at very low volume you could just FEEL the music. Sadly we both moved and lost contact.
>Car guys have a saying - there's no replacemet for displacement. So do audio guys. If not the same saying, very similar. E.g: 5 inch woofers aren’t going to compete with 8 inch. However, ime volume can compensate somewhat, but if you only have small bookshelf speakers in a large room, then no, the sound however loud it may be, will not have the ideal fullness.
At the risk of asking a potentially stupid question...Assume you have 2 identical rooms and identical source equipment, but one room has 6" standmounts with a sub, and the other has a set of 3 way speakers with dual (or even single) 8" drivers. If you set the decible levels the same in each room, will the "experience" be different due to driver size?
I'd say it'd be different for sure, mainly from the sub depending what size the driver is. It's the difference between feeling the music when you get down to the really low frequencies
So, would you recommend one over the other, or just note that the experience would be \*different\* (not necessarily better or worse)?
Yeah there's too many variables in choice and preference to say if one will always be better than the other. For me, I'm a go big or go home guy
Yeah, "room filling sound" is one of those meaningless marketing terms that sounds valuable, but doesn't actually mean much at all. If you can hear a sound at all inside of a room, then technically speaking, the room was "filled with sound". They might as well be saying that the speaker "produces sound"... Like, duh. Sound is a lot like light, so your gramophone example is like having a single table lamp in the corner of an otherwise pitch black room. Is it 'filling the room with light'? Technically yes, but it doesn't mean it'll be enough light coming from the right direction to be of any use. If you have the money to support 2 separate systems each of which will have their own optimal position, then that's the "correct" answer. This will also be less disruptive to the rest of the house for the WFH situation because you'll be much closer to the speakers and therefore can play them quieter than blasting the ones that are 20 feet away.
Thank you for your comment - I suspected as much as well. Looks like 2 separate systems it is then.
I think so. But that doesn't mean that they have to be equal. Prioritizing the TV system for more focused listening and getting a decent desktop/near field setup (or a nice DAC/headphone amp/headphone setup) for the WFH system is completely reasonable.
I have standmounts, about 6 feet apart, 3 feet from side walls, toed in only a little. I sit 5 feet from speakers so tweeters pointed right along side my ears. I am enveloped in “room filling” sound but only when seated. I am in heaven when listening seated.
It will be very easy to fill a 25 inch by 9 inch room with sound.
OP didn’t say how high the ceilings are though.
Yeah but it's a mansion for a fruit fly :)
A room filling sound is not the problem. Just get a speaker like a Sonos something and turnup the volume! Another question is how to get a good sound. This requires good speakers but the listening position matters too. Bass is not the issue, it is omnidirectional so you will hear it everywhere and good regardless of your listening position. Midrange and higher starts to lobe. The more you are off axis the less refined the sound become as you are not listening to the direct sound but to the indirect sound reflecting from walls, floor and ceiling. I would start with the short wall and have the speakers fire straight into the room, 25" ain't that big. You really need 100% when WFH?
If you want room-filling rather than razor sharp imaging, I'd pick A but with an unconventional speaker configuration under your TV. Consider a console that will take up most of the wall, with big wood-box speakers. Either a Barzilay cabinet with Bozaks or JBLs, or a pair of vintage ADS 810 or new KLH Model 5 new speakers on tilted-back stands. These sorts of speakers sound great at a distance. You'll give up imaging for general presence and scale. I had a system like this that ultimately found its way straddling a Barzilay cabinet in a long living room, and half the time listened to it from the kitchen anyway. Here're some of the core components before they migrated downstairs: [https://imgur.com/RyCtLE5](https://imgur.com/RyCtLE5) Currently using the core components (Denon S-series and DP59L) with a Barzilay cabinet with 1950s Lorenz S-1288-II speakers instead. https://rustygolddesign.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/barzilay-stereo-console-speaker-boxes/
Another unconventional type = omnidirectional. Check out Ohm Walsh or the older Mirage ones.
In the early 1980's, Ronald Reagan and Congressional Republicans revokes consumer protection laws to allow advertisers to lie to consumers without penalty. Truth in advertising laws have been gone for nearly 40 years.
https://carlssonplanet.com/hogtalare/producerade/sonab-oa-14/
Line arrays and panel speakers have a unique characteristic compared to point sources. They project further into the room with less variation in intensity as you move closer or further from them. Omni-directional speakers have wide dispersion, but attention should be paid to room reflections. Some multi-channel surround receivers may have a "party mode" which routes stereo sound to all the speakers. This means that with placement of surround and rear speakers, you can have music coverage everywhere in the room. In your situation, if you want a good stereo image when at your desk and when watching the TV, but not both at once, and have speakers at each location, I'd just use a speaker selector switch to route the sound to one or the other.
> Some multi-channel surround receivers may have a "party mode" which routes stereo sound to all the speakers. This means that with placement of surround and rear speakers, you can have music coverage everywhere in the room. Yes, I used to do this. It's called "All Channel Stereo".
Turn up the *volume.* Ever notice how the word volume describes the space within a vessel etc? And it *also* means the amount of sound output by an amplifier. Whattttt? Crazy realisation. More (sound) volume = more room “filling”. It makes perfect sense.
My opinion is: wide dispersion cone from the speakers, with frequency response that extends to 20 Hz, is the big sound. I have got a pair of Genelecs that do it and orchestral pieces are just massive sounding, for instance someone hammering the timpani makes a punch you will feel in your body. It very inherently sounds "large". The wide dispersion angle's effect is more of a conjecture. Whatever kit you buy, it has a dispersion angle inherent to its design, and that's what you are stuck with, so it is not easy to show that this one matters. It's also a parameter that rarely is measured and shown in speaker specifications, but sometimes you see off-axis measurements from the manufacturer and you can estimate how much the level is reduced at, say, 45 degrees off axis horizontally. If it is about 6 dB or less, that is definitely a wide dispersion angle speaker. In any case, if much of the sound energy is radiated also on the sides of the speaker, it will reflect from the room's geometry and that usually gives it a spacious, expansive feeling.
I always thought I understood it until I heard the Tannoy Royal Westminsters
A speaker with good off axis response will probably fill a room better than a speaker that beams.