I've always leaned towards larger speakers, even after trying smaller ones. After 'not' keeping up with the evolving technology for roughly 20 years, I thought that the tech must have advanced to the point that had somehow cheated the physics of what I grew up learning about what I liked. About the only thing that had changed is that the distortion thresholds had improved a lot with the smaller speakers, even with the more budget minded designs. Only reason I thought this is, for how popular bookshelf speakers had become, and towers with 5"-6" drivers in them. In my time, 8" drivers were an absolute minimum and they had better be close (point blank, even) to the MLP. I am somehow sensitive to this presence of larger displacement even when a set of speakers are playing at low levels. I could sense the difference between a 12" and a 15", the latter of which had been my sweet spot even when listening to other peoples systems.
More recently, I adopted a 12" design, mostly due to a lack of affordable and well designed 15" full range speakers. Well beyond my needs in terms of power, but not in displacement. I listened to them whole room with a more distant MLP like modern trends suggest. They sounded fantastic, but again, even after this many years, I could sense that missing displacement presence of just a few inches and ended up changing them to near field experience and that has made them large enough. Again, it's something I notice more at lower SPL.
Subwoofers tend to confuse this a bit for me. Plenty powerful at 12", even with two, but they have a different under-presence altogether. I have heard that the idea of this "presence" is imaginary/bunk, or perhaps I just don't know of a better way to explain how larger cones tend to excite the actual air molecules in the room comparatively, even if it is somehow right at where the cones and these molecules meet. I did not go into this expecting to have this condition confront me again as I had no expectation bias. I actually expected modern designs to cancel this and to be honest, I did not listen for a difference, which has always just been ever so slight, yet noticeable.
My current main speakers are rated from 10-500 WPC. The sensitivity is around 98db. My last speakers were rated at 10-150 WPC with a sensitivity in the low 90s. The SPL for when all starts to blend, and where this displacement presence seems to really even out is at around 87db at the MLP. At those levels, I don't notice the difference between the 12s and the 15s so much, if at all. What this does do though, is causes me to listen more at these louder levels. This has been true regardless of speaker brand (as long as quality was reasonably close) or even where I have lived, although historically I have sort of always gravitated towards the same types/size of homes to live in. This home is actually a little smaller so I thought I would be ok with smaller speakers, but that is not the case. It's also from the upper mid bass to the lowest octaves. Mid-range and highs have never really been an issue. I did not really notice a difference between say, a 4" or 5" midrange speaker.
There's more to it that I have run out of steam with an explanation for now, but it took some work and change of listening style to really put these 12s in the realm of true ass-kickery. Basically it has taken living in the higher SPL realm, with four, 12" (2, midbass and 2 subs) drivers to get me there and near field at that. I'm not complaining. Just happy that something as simple as near fielding them fixed it for me in this music only system.
