Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Small room - speaker choice?

All,

We've recently bought a semi-detached house. The best room for listening to music (short of building a new room in the garden ) is a bedroom the furthest away from the other house. However, the room is only 12 foot square roughly. While it could probably be extended, I am wondering what sort of speakers might work in it with the current size?

In particular, would a pair of DSP8Ks be too much? I currently have a front trio of DSP5Ks bought over a decade ago, so an upgrade is due!

Any opinions appreciated, thanks all.

Welcome to the forum, What sort of listening do you do, Just stereo or do you want to have surround, Trifield Music Ambisonic etc?

Have you set up your 5000s in the room yet to get a feel for things?

It may help to list all your relevant kit in your signiture, I am sure advice is on its way.

Just thoughts, Chris

Ummm, no. DSP8ks would not work in a room that small. I'm afraid that in this case, the 8000s would be way too much of a good thing. Even if you have the option of having the speakers fire down the rooms diagonal axis (making the best of a non-acoustically-ideal square room), I would bet that the largest DSP speakers that would work would be the DSP5K or DSP5K2. Any of the larger models would completely over power the room at low frequencies with thudding, booming bass.

Happy Trails!
MTB Vince

Based on limited experience I'd be tempted to try some 5200s.
Good luck with it.

+1 for 5200s, fabulous sound, look gorgeous, want.
Tintin

Have to disagree here. On the advice of my dealer and a couple of Hikers I just replaced a pair of 5K2s with a pair of 6Ks in my office which is 12' x 12' with a 9 1/2 foot ceiling. The bass is well and truly there but controlled. Beyond that the sound is just great. Not that the 5Ks were anything but good but the 6Ks are better by a bunch.

Ken

Can't find the post, but wasn't Bob Stuart once asked which M speaker would sound best in a phone box?

His answer was reported to be "DSP8k".

Yes. The question was asked at HH2.

Where do you plug it in?

In my experience 8ks need lots of space around them to sound their best; and the listener needs to be well forward of the rear wall. Many here will disagree.

I posted this yesterday but it was lost.

Im going to make a potentially stupid onservation...

If all speakers are calibrated identically, surely, at the sound levels that can be achieved by all speakers, then no one speaker is going to be more over powering than another. ie a DSP8000 played at 65 is going to be as loud as a DSP33 played at 65.

I appreciate that some speakers will have different constructions which may affect placement, ie rear ported, side firing etc and some will go deeper than others, but surely, for normal music listening conditions (I listen at 40-70 on the Meridian scale), I'm not going to get blown out of the room nor be subject to overwhelming bass because its simply not there in the original material. Where the bigger speakers win is by their ability to do things more gracefully with less effort and with a internal volume that allows them to convey the subtleties in the music by being acoustically more similar to the instruments that they are trying to reproduce.

I can see things will be different as you pump up the volume, where lesser speakers won't keep up with their bigger brother, but I'm talking about what 99% of us listen music to, 99% of the time.

Hi Ian, I think I made a similar point some years back. 65 will be 65 in all speakers in theory.

The only thing that might make the 8k sound effect the round different to, for example, a 5k is the low frequencies. They might flare up in the room and certainly placement will be important.

FWIW I found the 8k better behaved than the 55k. Side firing bass is better distributed.

Sitting away from the rear wall is sensible and I speculate that it is due to the height of the 8k tweeters and mid. these might more easily hit the wall above and behind the listener and reflect down to the listener. A 5k would possibly reflect up and away from the listeners ear or even be absorbed by the listener and sofa more.

Late at night I will listen in the quiet hours at 40-45 and if you had eyes shut you would never guess that the 8k was the size that it is.

Leading from that you might consider a smaller speaker if you plan to listen at low volumes. Larger speakers come into their own when you see just how capable at volume they can be.

Just my 2p