Speaker sytems for a VTPO audience in a very small room

My current speaker setup ( M-Audio studio monitors/ studio sub ) natively has a very narrow "sweet spot" zone, focussed on the organists bench, whilst other listeners have to live with a reduced audio quality.
Now I intend to replace the set-up by a sytem which "fills" a greater part of the room with a high quality sound, satisfying for the organist and the aufience equally. ( The place of the console is already included into the considerations )

The music-studio is a 4mX4m room with an adjacent pantry kitchen ( now storage room ) of which the "window" covers two thirds of its side. I plan to place my speaker into this space.
The basic audio set-up will be a multi channel sytem driving the Paramount 341 and Milan Masterworks based on the Paramount recommendations (http://www.paramountorganworks.com/scri ... loads.html) which are three stereo-speakergroups plus sub.

The speakers I am looking for should
- have a "sweet-spot" zone as big as possible,
- be powered just to meet not more than the dimensions of the room,
- reproduce TO samples also under "difficult reproduction conditions" at a high quality level.

After searching without any convincing sucess for quite while, I now would like to ask the members of this forumfor advice. Any thought would be appreciated very much.

Amun

Hello Amun,

Thank you for your post. I will share a few thoughts that I hope will be helpful.

The M-Audio monitors (BX8, BX5 ?) are probably not the problem. My hunch is that it is the room that presents the biggest challenge. The square shape will exacerbate room modes leading to uneven response. This can be mitigated with acoustic treatment. I highly recommend that you study the article linked below:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec09/a ... ustics.htm

Experiment with speaker position and the position of your console. Consider adding rear speakers for surround reverb. For example, the Lexicon MX400 can take a two channel input and generate a very nice four channel reverb field. The "Surround Hall" preset is very suitable.

Let us know how it all turns out for you.

Joe Hardy
Paramount Organ Works

I second everything Joe says. More than likely if your happy with the sound in your sweet spot your most cost effective solution will be 2 more of the same studio monitors.
Matt

I'd agree with the others that room correction is very important; but I will say that after having tested the m-audio and being severely disappointed by the sweet spot... I do have other speakers which work much better in the same room, same spot. The only reason I'm chiming in at all is because I tested those speakers and could not stomach the very narrow sweet spot; I need to be able to move my head a few inches

I'm using adam's for my hw setup, I also own kef home theatre speakers (these are passive of course); the kefs especially throw an incredibly wide sweet spot (same stands as the maudios were on). The adams also do very well, they have a nice "open air" ribbon tweeter that manages to do the impossible feat of reproducing mixtures and 1' - 2' ranks with precision, clarity, but with absolutely no ear fatigue or distortion.

The adams are significantly cheaper than the kefs, either speaker would probably help out in your setup much more than the maudios; again, I do agree on room treatments, but nothing can correct a poor speaker, you can only make it sound as good as possible under the circumstances.

Summarizing Your thoughts and experiences I learned:
- room correction is important, but only can improve the desired "wide" sweet spot within the limits of the speakers,
- the DynAudios, if focussed on the organist, apparently produce a sweet spot too narrow for a group of listeners positioned beside the console,
- the Adams score by clarity etc, the kefs by throwing an extremely wide spot.

With the kefs sonar11 introduced the sort of home theatre speaker systems into the discussion, to which I would like to add the sort of HIFI sytems. With such a system, a Denon Mini System ( not being siutable for HW reproductions) , I also experienced an astonishing wide sweet spot when reproducing CDs.

This brings me to the question, if the sort of monitor speakers are the speakers of the choice for my purpose as described above.

Rgds,
Amun

May i add that roomcorrection can also be achieved with very good results by using digital roomcorrection using Arc2 roomcorrection software. You don't need to use damping foam or other absortion to counteract roomnodes.
See the topic Arc2 room correction.

Regards Jan

Active equalization such as ARC2 can be a useful tool, but I must respectfully disagree that it is a substitute for physical treatment (absorption, diffraction, judicious speaker placement). It is nice to have after applying traditional room correction methods.

M-Audio monitors are not bad, but there are more accurate reproducers. I personally like the original Mackie HR824. There are many other excellent studio monitors on the market (Genelec and ATC being two excellent examples at the higher end).

So called "Hi-Fi" speakers can also do a good job, especially the British B&W products IMO.

Good luck getting the sound you are after, Amun.

Joe Hardy

Hello Joe

Altough i have covered my ceiling with sound absorbent plates , also behind the organ and the opposite site of my room and even using a thick carpet in part of the room, my sample sets really came alive after using Arc2 roomcorrection.
So i disagree with you.

Regards Jan Loosman

Summarizing Your thoughts and experiences I learned:
- room correction is important, but only can improve the desired "wide" sweet spot within the limits of the speakers,
- the DynAudios, if focussed on the organist, apparently produce a sweet spot too narrow for a group of listeners positioned beside the console,
- the Adams score by clarity etc, the kefs by throwing an extremely wide spot.

With the kefs sonar11 introduced the sort of home theatre speaker systems into the discussion, to which I would like to add the sort of HIFI sytems. With such a system, a Denon Mini System ( not being siutable for HW reproductions) , I also experienced an astonishing wide sweet spot when reproducing CDs.

This brings me to the question, if the sort of monitor speakers are the speakers of the choice for my purpose as described above.

Rgds,
Amun

Well, I would say the kefs are the better speaker all around; imaging, clarity, and soundstage; I'm not an audiophile by any means, though I can tell the difference between a poor and a good setup (to a certain point). The kefs do everything right (compared to the cheaper atoms), with the atoms I notice just a hint of "boxy" sound in the lower frequency somewhere; the kefs (r300) are completely silent in that area and sound like floor standing speakers (in that it doesn't have a cheap bookshelf sound; it doesn't quite have the power output of a floor stander of course). The atoms are $600 a pair, amplified; the kefs are close to $1800 a pair, and you need to bring your own amplification. The reason I chose the atoms for the HW setup is because they work extremely well on organ sounds (again, those upper frequencies are smooth and clear, but the whole range works well down to about 90 hz where I crossover to my sub anyway), and because they are cheap enough that I can afford to add more pairs in the future. If I tried that with the Kefs I'd go broke in a short hurry.

Speaking of amplification though; I would advise against home theatre amps; I tried that too, everything from pioneer to yamaha to marantz. They all performed poorly. I went with emotiva amps and they did an excellent job, I still use these amps to power the kefs now.