large room loudspeaker choices

[cpaus]

I have a very large room - 36x22. Unable to use Towers and must resort to wall mounted bookshelf speakers. After much research I ran across Axiom M22 that seem to have a lot of bang for the buck. But audioholics review had one "con" of the speaker as "not suited for larger rooms"

Does anyone have some suggestions for wall mountable front L/R speakers that perform well but won't break the bank?

They will beused for both 2 channel and home theater listening

 

[markw]

Speakers are all about moving air in the room.

And, big rooms require a lot of air to be moved. And, to move a lot of air takes either a few large speakers or many smaller speakers.

IOW, a small wall mount won't do if sound quality figures into your plans, particularly when music is important.

 

[cpaus]

not an audiophile.....

while I am not an audiophile looking to put in the "perfect" sounding reference system - I have to work within my restrictions. I would like to do the best I can within a budget to get sound that is enjoyable to listen to.

 

[markw]

Well then, sharing a few specifics would help.

while I am not an audiophile looking to put in the "perfect" sounding reference system - I have to work within my restrictions. I would like to do the best I can within a budget to get sound that is enjoyable to listen to.

1) What is "the budget"?
2) This is for how many speakers? Two? Two plus a center? Five? Six? Seven? Please note that for the last three I'm assuming one is a center.
3) Are you expecting to use a subwoofer? Is that included int "the budget" or is that a separate budget item?

When you answer these then perhaps some workable solutions can be dreived. ...or, then again, maybe not, depending on if they are realistic.

 

[jcPanny]

Klipsch

If you are limited to bookshelf speakers, look into models with horn loaded tweeters like the Klipsch reference series. They are very efficient allowing them to play louder with less power.
LFE will also be a challange in that room. You might consider a good 12" or larger sub for the low frequency SOUND and buttkickers on the furniture for the FEAL.

 

[cpaus]

more details....

budget under $2k incl. the sub.

for a 5.1 home theater setup. rear surrounds - dipole. main l/r wall mount only. center on top of TV

definitely subwoofer - I think fairly powerful to not get lost in the room.

 

[Nick250]

Do you already have amplfication, and if so what is it?

Nick

 

[cpaus]

no A/V receiver yet. looking at denon, harmon kardon, pioneer elite, onkyo, yamaha...

 

[maytagman]

If youre just looking for quality sound in a venue that large you may wish to consider some of the offerings from pro-audio manufacturers. Choosing consumer type gear to fill that big a room will undoubtedly cost you several times more than a simple PA. Larger non-near-field studio monitors or smaller PA cabinets (with horn drivers) still give excellent sound, although they are designed to rock a large area rather than the intimate listening hi-fi is made for. Truth be told the only difference I notice between my mid-fi home theater (which uses studio montiors as FOH) and my PA is a little more amp noise (when there is no signal).

It will be much easier to hit your $2k price point this way. Many mid-fi manuf's also have halfway products. Wharfdale for example makes the same cabinet (the 8.2 I believe) and sells it both as a home theater offering and a reference monitor. Find a nice used pre/pro or receiver with preouts, bag 4 smallish cabs (I'd personally go with 10" JBL m-pros or a smaller piece from EV), a stack of carvin or those Behringer things all the cool kids use, and an adequate sub for your needs. As long as you control the 'disco smile' effect of club rigs with EQ and good amplification they really can sound great. I'll leave the mid-fi/hi-fi stuff to the other guys... maybe someone does make a solution for rooms this big, but I sure don't know about it, and I bet its expensive as all hell.


Just FYI I run a pair of Alesis Monitor One Mk II passives. They were pulling mastering duty on my workstation, but I'm takin a break from that. Im only feeding them through an HK AVR140, which's rated at around 45 watts... The Alesis cabs fill the hell out of my largeish room without straining, and sound absolutely great. They're technically near fields, but their throw pattern is actually versatile enough for FOH duty and still getting decent imaging. Now consider that these things RMS at almost three times that wattage, and cost $200/pr.

 

[brendy]

For such a large room wall mountable speakers are just too small. Assuming a 8' ceiling height that is 6336 cu ft. Why are you unable to use tower's ?

 

[InTheIndustry]

For such a large room wall mountable speakers are just too small. Assuming a 8' ceiling height that is 6336 cu ft. Why are you unable to use tower's ?

I disagree with wall mounted speakers being too small. Jamo D6 and D7 models are wall mounatble and will fill a large room very well. However, they are way past this fellow's budget. A 5.1 Set of D6 models run $4K.

A question: Does the seating area in the room take up the entire area or is the space split up or shared with other things? If the seating area isn't that big, you won't need speakers to fill the room, just the main listening area. Edit: If you will be listening to the music or TV from the 36' back or side of the room, you won't have a problem. I'm referring to your main listening/seating area.

Unfortunately, it's tough to ask a 5.1 speaker set in the $2K price range to fill up an area that big with sound AND sound really good. But, if your main couch, chair, etc. is say, 15' - 20' from the L/C/R speakers you shouldn't have a problem at all in the $2K range. Now if the back of your couch is at the 36' mark, that's a different story.

A wall mountable, 5.1 bookshelf system that I used recently consisted of:

1 pair Jamo E825 (Front L/R) http://jamo.com/Default.aspx?ID=5949&M=Shop&PID=16440&ProductID=16740
1 pair Jamo E8SUR.2 (Rear Surround) http://jamo.com/Default.aspx?ID=5949&M=Shop&PID=16440&ProductID=16752
1 Jamo E 8CEN.2 (Center) http://jamo.com/Default.aspx?ID=5949&M=Shop&PID=16440&ProductID=16748
1 Sub6510 (Subwoofer) http://jamo.com/Default.aspx?ID=5949&M=Shop&PID=16440&ProductID=16748

MSRP for this whole system runs around $1875.

Note: If you didn't need/want dipole speakers than you could subsitiute the E8SUR.2's for a pair of the Jamo E805 http://jamo.com/Default.aspx?ID=5949&M=Shop&PID=16440&ProductID=16736 which is what I would suggest based on your budget. That would bring the total system cost down to $1760 or so.

This was installed in a basment space that was 17' accross and 25' deep with the customers main seating area 15' from the television screen and L/C/R's. All of the speakers I listed above (except for the sub) come from the factory ready to be flush mounted against the wall without the need of additional brackets. For $1600 it was a great little system. The basement had 9' ceilings an open hall way, lots of windows, and an open staircase to the upstairs. It still performed well.

 

[cpaus]

We reached the same conclusion and decided to go with towers for front L/R. We also determined we would have to increase our budget. After a full day at a store doing listen and learn we have found what could be a stellar system (although we ended up doubling our budget) The sales guy (son of the store owner) also had a large room at home with a lot of hard surfaces so he was familiar with our problem. We tried out many different speakers from B&W, Paradigm and some others I cannot remember in a large demo room in the store.

We ended up really drawn to the Paradigm Studio m100 v3 towers, cc-570 center, adp-470 surrounds and a paradigm 12" down-firing sub (not sure of model number). Driven by a Pioneer Elite vsx-84txsi

after a full day of eval on sunday I am happy to report awesome!

thanks to all for advice!

 

[markw]

I think you made a wise decision.

It's better to spend more and know you're going to he happy for a long time than to chintz out and regret it every time you turn it on.