Bookshelf v Tower for a smaller room

[jliedeka]

I decided to start upgrading my 10 year old gear this year. Mainly I want a more future proof receiver (if there is such a thing) and especially speakers. For now I'm leaning toward speakers first since they are less likely to become obsolete and because I have a very low end Klipsch system now. What I have isn't all that bad as long as I work within their limitations but I would like to crank up some stuff once in a while that doesn't work well with my speakers.

I've got a 12 x 16 x 8 living room (just over 1500 cu ft). Before I start doing some serious auditioning, I'd like to figure out what would work best so I can narrow the search. Ideally, I'd like some moderate sized towers so I could play a lot of two channel without a sub. I'm just afraid that towers with enough bass to run sub-less would overpower my room.

Does anyone have a similar situation? The thing that got me thinking about towers was Tom Andry's review of the Axiom 60 speakers. He has a similar situation and he says those didn't overpower his room. I guess I'm looking in that approximate price range also. I have considered that a decent bookshelf system may be less expensive which would allow me to upgrade my receiver sooner but I'd rather wait and buy decent stuff as I can afford it.

I guess this was a little verbose so I'll repeat the question. For my room, can I reasonably consider tower speakers or should I stick with bookshelves? Bonus points if you can tell me whether multipole surround speakers would be appropriate for a 12 x 12 theater area.

Jim

 

[fredk]

The advice I have heard several times when asking the same question is that, while larger speakers have the ability to go much louder than a small room can handle (unless you really want to pop your eardrums) they will still sound very very good at lower volumes.

I listened to 60s and M80s in a 12x20x8 room and they both sounded great.

I will be going with the M80 because I like the sound, even though I will not push these speakers at all in my room (almost the same size as the one mentioned above).

Before auditioning I thought that I would go with the M60 because of my room size, but the M80 sounds just that much better to me, even in a smallish room.

Fred

 

[jostenmeat]

Jim

The following consists of my opinions and/or impressions after countless hours of reading forums, with a bit of personal experience added in. I like full-range towers for the most flexibility, and I find at most persons' price points that the cost of a nice looking set of speaker stands can be defrayed within the larger price points of towers. You can always still x-over at any point you choose, but you know that you will be much less likely to suffer in the mid-bass as some bookshelves do. Could I be happy with a nice of bookshelves + sub? Sure, of course.

Sometimes it might depend on who you are, and what you listen to. I've befriended someone at AVS that I've PM'd a hundred times with who studies chemistry, but happens to have perfect pitch and tunes pipe organs for money. Someone like him will definitely go with towers (regardless if he had a sub or not) as he loves organ music firstly, and actually prefers 3-way speakers because he believes that the excursions from the bass are much less likely to muddle up the midrange, as he finds many 2-ways may do. Now that is his take on it, an opinion that I have not made up for myself, but I definitely have heard very pricey bookshelves that really hurt in the mid-bass, let alone bass.

Now, there is one excellent arguement for sats + sub being the gained flexibility of hopefully placing the sub in a more ideal location. However, some people only have a spot or two that can work anyways. Oh, I've tried crawling for bass, and the best spot was in a location that I would definitely never put it in, anyways. Personally, and I know I'm a rarity here (with all the photos I've seen), I have not heard a sub-setup that I liked when it was corner loaded. I've been only into this a little over a year, but every time its corner loaded, the sub was always way too localizable due to the peaking, localizable frequencies coming from that corner. I just personally hate that. Just my experiences, and of course your experiences may greatly differ.

Regarding multi-poles. I've never tried them. I have the impression that this is personal taste. Multi's being more "enveloping" and monopoles providing better imaging? Monopoles will give you flexibility in that you can always move them to be a bedroom or dining stereo, etc. Perhaps easier to sell as well. Some multi-poles are more flexible than others too. For example I believe PSB makes one that can be set to either dipole, bipole, monopole, or dual monopoles (two sets of speaker inputs, ie side surrounds + rear surrounds). How's that for flexibility?

And you thought you were verbose...

 

[Sheep]

I went from towers to bookshelf speakers in my 16x12x8 room. I did also step up in speaker quality, but I would have gone bookshelf anyway. I could never get my sub to blend nicely with my towers. If you have a subwoofer, I would go with a bookshelf, as your dollar will go farther. But if you need bass, the tower would be the better option.

I would only use a tower in a 2 channel system though, I prefer the flexibility and accurate placement bookshelves offer over the tower (wall mount, etc), not to mention sexy speaker stands.

Multipole surrounds have a use on side walls for surround. This is the THX spec. Some prefer their sound in all the spots, some hate it anywhere. You'll have to make up your mind on whether or not you want them. When the time comes, I will run multipoles in my theater (not 7.1 yet).

SheepStar

 

[3db]

I decided to start upgrading my 10 year old gear this year. Mainly I want a more future proof receiver (if there is such a thing) and especially speakers. For now I'm leaning toward speakers first since they are less likely to become obsolete and because I have a very low end Klipsch system now. What I have isn't all that bad as long as I work within their limitations but I would like to crank up some stuff once in a while that doesn't work well with my speakers.

I've got a 12 x 16 x 8 living room (just over 1500 cu ft). Before I start doing some serious auditioning, I'd like to figure out what would work best so I can narrow the search. Ideally, I'd like some moderate sized towers so I could play a lot of two channel without a sub. I'm just afraid that towers with enough bass to run sub-less would overpower my room.

Does anyone have a similar situation? The thing that got me thinking about towers was Tom Andry's review of the Axiom 60 speakers. He has a similar situation and he says those didn't overpower his room. I guess I'm looking in that approximate price range also. I have considered that a decent bookshelf system may be less expensive which would allow me to upgrade my receiver sooner but I'd rather wait and buy decent stuff as I can afford it.

I guess this was a little verbose so I'll repeat the question. For my room, can I reasonably consider tower speakers or should I stick with bookshelves? Bonus points if you can tell me whether multipole surround speakers would be appropriate for a 12 x 12 theater area.

Jim

Hi Jim

My HT rig aslo serves as my music rig as well so I went with towers as well for my main left and right speakers in a room smaller than yours and without any negative effect. I switch my towers to small when in HT mode letting teh sub handle all of the bass but for music, I shut my sub off and listen to my towers full range. The only time I put the sub on with music is when I'm listening to organ music from Bach where mhy towers just can't dig deep enough to hit those bottom notes. The only way tower sepakers over power a room is if you really crank them. During sane volume levels, it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Davemcc]

The advice I have heard several times when asking the same question is that, while larger speakers have the ability to go much louder than a small room can handle (unless you really want to pop your eardrums) they will still sound very very good at lower volumes.

The same is true of a properly calibrated sub/sat system. Bookshelf speakers are not "quieter" or less capable than their floorstanding counterparts of an equivalent brand and model. Equivalent bookshelves could still drive you out of the room with excess volume (while still sounding good), yet still sound good at low volume. Volume is a function of sensitivity and your control of the amplifier.

I find at most persons' price points that the cost of a nice looking set of speaker stands can be defrayed within the larger price points of towers.

While this may be true at the lower price points, once you move into a high quality speaker the cost of the stands becomes nearly irrelevant. For instance, the cost to buy the tower version of my current speakers would have been a $1200 premium. That would buy one helluva stand.

You can always still x-over at any point you choose, but you know that you will be much less likely to suffer in the mid-bass as some bookshelves do.

In my mind, the object of an upgrade is to achieve the flattest possible frequency response. When choosing quality bookshelf speakers with decent extension and flat response, mid-bass suck-out is a non-issue. The response will be flat. I'm not aware of any QUALITY bookshelves that extend well below 80hz that have a severe dip in the 100-200hz range. I suggest to you that if you find bookshelves with this severe mid-bass deficiency, the tower version of that speaker will not be worth owning either.

My experience is that I have a hard time finding towers that I like, mostly for what I believe to be cabinet resonance and coloring issues. Bookshelf speakers are less prone to these issues. My opinion is that if you already have a sub, bookshelves are the way to go in a smaller room if you are willing to put the effort into a proper sub calibration. You still should properly calibrate your sub for HT use anyway, so it's not any extra work to do this with towers or bookshelves.

 

[TLS Guy]

I decided to start upgrading my 10 year old gear this year. Mainly I want a more future proof receiver (if there is such a thing) and especially speakers. For now I'm leaning toward speakers first since they are less likely to become obsolete and because I have a very low end Klipsch system now. What I have isn't all that bad as long as I work within their limitations but I would like to crank up some stuff once in a while that doesn't work well with my speakers.

I've got a 12 x 16 x 8 living room (just over 1500 cu ft). Before I start doing some serious auditioning, I'd like to figure out what would work best so I can narrow the search. Ideally, I'd like some moderate sized towers so I could play a lot of two channel without a sub. I'm just afraid that towers with enough bass to run sub-less would overpower my room.

Does anyone have a similar situation? The thing that got me thinking about towers was Tom Andry's review of the Axiom 60 speakers. He has a similar situation and he says those didn't overpower his room. I guess I'm looking in that approximate price range also. I have considered that a decent bookshelf system may be less expensive which would allow me to upgrade my receiver sooner but I'd rather wait and buy decent stuff as I can afford it.

I guess this was a little verbose so I'll repeat the question. For my room, can I reasonably consider tower speakers or should I stick with bookshelves? Bonus points if you can tell me whether multipole surround speakers would be appropriate for a 12 x 12 theater area.

Jim

Yes, you can consider towers. I personally don't like bookshelf speakers except in a very small room and then I would be very tempted to go back to my full range drivers.

If you want to listen to a well designed coherent speaker in two channel then a well voiced and balanced tower with an F3 below 40 Hz is the way to go.

 

[jcPanny]

Sub for HT

For HT, you will definatley want a good sub in your system.

Some of the larger bookshelf speakers can do pretty well with the full range 2 channel signal like my Onix Ref 1's and the Ascend Sierras. It just depends on what type of music you listen to and how much bass you want.

 

[jostenmeat]

Dave, yes ok granted, some people would have to pay $1,200 to make the bookshelf combo to become the same price. That's why I prefaced it with "most persons' price points". I did not take the time to look up the Axiom 60 prices (now I have). And I still typed that while realizing that Jim must already have speaker stands... It was just a general point that I like to make, for better or worse.

Well, probably the most expensive pair of bookshelves with very wanting mid-bass, to my subjective ears, were the Focal BE series. A lot of people consider them to be "Quality", but oh well. Perhaps your statement that the tower version is not worth owning either is true indeed, as I found that version to be a bit weak there as well. However, not nearly as weak as the bookshelf version.

About half of my favorite music rigs I heard were a pair of floorstanders, and the other half were floorstanders coupled with a sub. While I have auditioned several pairs of bookshelves, I have to admit I never did that when coupled to a sub, and that I listened to 10x as many floorstanders. Yes, I'm biased to say the least! Thanks for tempering my comments.

I'm sure its just me, but combining a sub with mains for stereo has not been so straight-forward as it has been with so many others. It's a moot point now as I split off the stereo system, but I never had anything like an SMS-1, which does cost a pretty penny. I am not going to delve into my perceptions, as I sorta spelled them out already in fired up's sub thread. I'll just say that 80hz is nearly a required x-over point in HT, since LFE material goes to at least this point, and any lower x-over point means that you will be missing some LFE (only goes to sub). An issue is that 80hz is not always the best x-over point for a 2.1 stereo, IMO. Now this issue I bring up is not bookshelf-exclusive, but an issue for floorstanders as well. The easiest solution I came up with when stereo and HT were combined was to run my mains as large, and to manually turn off the sub for stereo listening, or manually turning it on for HT. I was not going to fire up the display just to play with x-over, with the pre/pro's BM which has very simplistic anyways.

If 80 hz happens to be the ideal x-over for the music rig too, that is fortuitous indeed. A steeper roll-off would be nice I presume, to help avoid localizing the sub. Perhaps another argument to invest in nice bass management. In my experiences, it was just easier to avoid bass mgmt altogether!

Um, good luck Jim.

 

[jliedeka]

Thanks to everyone who has responded so far.

Some more information:

1. usage will be about 80/20 HT to music but I don't want to skimp on music reproduction capability.

2. I currently have a sub but plan to upgrade that as well. I'm thinking SVS PB12 Plus or Hsu VTF 2.3 but those choices aren't set in stone.

3. If I used multi-pole surrounds, they would have to be on stands. Actually, either way they would have to be on stands due to a big window directly behind me and a right wall 4 feet farther than the left.

4. I haven't settled on a budget but I'm thinking $2-3k for the 5 speakers.

I've thought about 5 Sierra-1s, a few different Axiom systems, PSB Image, Paradigm Studio 20s and a few others. The PSBs and Paradigms are sold locally. There are maybe a few more brands I can check out like Totem and possibly Revels. I'm a reasonable road trip away from Monitor Audio.

Like probably everyone there is a tension between what I'd like and what I can afford. I'm also factoring in the need to drive the speakers with an older 70wpc Yamaha receiver until I can upgrade that.

Jim

 

[zumbo]

I don't believe Axiom makes a floorstanding speaker that is capable of good bass.

I would recommend B&W bookshelf with a sub of your choice.

 

[fredk]

No doubt, a good bookshelf with a good sub will give you more bass, if that's what you want.

I was able to a/b the m22+ sub against the m80. It was quite interesting. I found that the bass really opened up and became transparent with the M22+ sub, but the mids and high end really opened up with the M80. Overall I liked the M80 better, but thats my personal taste.

I wonder if others have done similar a/b comparisons with other speakers?

Either way, the best thing is to go out and do some comparisons to see what you like. There must be dealers out there willing/able to set up such a comparison for you.

Fred
Fred

 

[armaraas]

You sound like you're about where I'm at in looking for speakers, similar budget, some of the similar brands, etc. If you're willing to try Axiom's, I would also recommend auditioning Aperion 5T or 6T's. They'll pay shipping both ways if you do not like them (I have never heard them personally). I am planning on auditioning 6T's and M80's together later this summer. If I can find a good deal on Energy RC-50's or 70's I might try to include them. I just haven't found very many good places to audition speakers around me so I am trying to narrow down to a few brands I can get easily online, and I am limited by the size of the corresponding centers.

I did audition some Avalon Acoustics NP Evolution Series speakers. They sounded pretty good, but I didn't have anything to compare them to at the time. They're high on the price end, about $2800 for the main 3, I would have to use a different brand for surrounds.

I'm going to be in Madison next week, any good audio places I should check out down there? I'll be in the Verona area, I've been there a few times, but not overly familiar with the area.

 

[jliedeka]

I've only been in The Happy Medium which is on the 400 block of State St (off the capital square). They carry PSBs. There's University Audio on South Park St (I think 400 block) and they carry Paradigm and some other stuff. There is also Specialized Sound on South Gammon Road just south of the belt line (hwy 12-18), first left off the Gammon Rd exit. They carry a bunch of stuff but I mostly think of B&W.

Jim

 

[3db]

I've only been in The Happy Medium which is on the 400 block of State St (off the capital square). They carry PSBs. There's University Audio on South Park St (I think 400 block) and they carry Paradigm and some other stuff. There is also Specialized Sound on South Gammon Road just south of the belt line (hwy 12-18), first left off the Gammon Rd exit. They carry a bunch of stuff but I mostly think of B&W.

Jim

Have you auditioned the PSBs yet?

 

[zumbo]

I've only been in The Happy Medium which is on the 400 block of State St (off the capital square). They carry PSBs. There's University Audio on South Park St (I think 400 block) and they carry Paradigm and some other stuff. There is also Specialized Sound on South Gammon Road just south of the belt line (hwy 12-18), first left off the Gammon Rd exit. They carry a bunch of stuff but I mostly think of B&W.

Jim

You have great choices to audition. I am sure most of the shops will be able to let you compare floorstanders to bookshelf with a sub. Out of the brands you listed, I prefer B&W. But, that's just my preference. Make sure, just for fun, to listen to B&W 805's.

 

[jcPanny]

Speaker locations

Also check out the paradigm studio series. The studio 20 bookshelf models should be in your price range. You might be able to get the floorstanders if you buy used from audiogon.

For the surround channels, the distance and level settings on your receiver should be able to compensate for the seating location allow you to mount dipole or bipole type speakers on the side walls.

 

[fredk]

Sounds like you do have a good range of speakers you can listen to. Wherever possible, try to compare speakers from different manufacturers directly. Audio memory is said to be very short. It sounds like you have an opportunity to compare psb to paradigm and psb seems to have a good reputation as a value buy.

If you listen to the Studio line, give a listen to the Studio 60s as well. They are suposed to be similar to the Axiom M60. I personally liked the sound of studios, though I found the 20s just didn't give you much of a sound stage. They just sounded small to me.

Fred

 

[gliz]

jim,

Check these out. They are a 8 inch 2 way bookshelf considering these myself.

http://www.cambridgesoundworks.com/store/category.cgi?category=spk_bookshelf&item=53CW0115AA000#

 

[jostenmeat]

Well Jim, time to pack a few very familiar cd's, lunch, map, and start listening! After healthy auditioning, narrowing down a couple of favorites, you can then bargain-hunt online. I don't think it may have been mentioned here, but I'd like to add Dynaudio to the list. Typically very smooth and phase-coherent.

I've found "fired up" a $2k deal for Contour 3.0s before, of course that sold in a heartbeat. Heck, there's the same pair right now that is pending sale for $500 more.

Here's a 3.0 Audience combo for $999.:
http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1212951156

IIRC, the most affordable speakers made by Dyn (smallest bookshelves) msrp pretty close to 1k. Not a bad deal here! (fyi, Audience is the entry level, Contours is two lines up. davemcc has a pair of Focus, IIRC, the in-between line).

I recognize the seller's handle as well, an AVS forum member that appears to be a nice fellow. IIRC, he sells Dyn's, PSB, Parasound, others. Anyways, I typically would expect that saving 50% on Audiogon is a very realistic goal.

Speakers that I would love to hear, never had the chance, include Salk, Vandersteen, Epos, Era, Dali. It could be a moot point in your modest room, but IIRC, speakers like Ascend, Revel, and especially Totem like a bit more power.

edit: ahhh, too good to be true. $999 is for the towers, center add $500. Still not a bad deal at all, just not an utter steal as I previously thought!