Rip Van Woofer said:
I have read -- from reliable enough sources to accept that it's true -- that one of the limitations a small room imposes on a system is the apparent dynamic range; in particular, the subjective loudness of dynamic peaks.
I am not aware of this being a hard rule. I'm familar with much of the general perceptual research in this area of reverb/reflection effects on human perception[
though I can not think of a study that directly addressed dynamic range perception based on room reverb or reflection time], but I can not think of how a small room in itself must cause a problem as you describe, unless it's just a distortion of your perception due to result of using
improperly treated or non-treated acoustic listening space. The effect may be simply related to the negative impression/quality an overbearing short reverb/delay time combined with high amplitude vs. direct sound. Refer back to the thread you started about room noise floor perception level. I think this may be a related issue. Looking at it from one perspective: if you have a small room with prominent early reflections, and then compare the same setup in a substantially larger room with more spacing from the walls, the reflection time vs. direct sound will increase. Human auditory system will tend to prefer longer reflection time and reverb time, as compared to shorter time spans, since shorter time differences are percieved as interference, where as longer different times are percieved as ambience enhancement. Perhaps a certain combination of this is causing you to percieve some sort of dynamic range difference. If one applies specific treatments for a room given a specific speaker and listening position/speaker position, most of the inherant room problems concerning midbass to treble should be nullified. The Orion speaker you are using is intended to make use of 1st reflections more so than most other speakers, and as such, this speaker can not be properly[as defined by the designer] used in a small room that does not allow the [rather large] recommended spacings for that speaker. Many speakers can be used in such smaller rooms by use of increased number of room treatments to heavily reduce 1st reflections. But with a speaker such as the Orion use of more treatments to reduce the reflection amplitudes further because of the required close spacings in a small room to improve sound, will in turn be counterproductive and nullify many of the psychoacoustic effects that this speaker is excellent at producing by it's efficient use of the 1st reflections in it's intended environment.
This reply I have provided is rather ambiguous; a result of trying to guess what your specific percieved problem might be. Please address specific points if you desire specific information.
It must be noted that you have two primary delay times to be concerned with: the 1st reflection time vs. direct sound and the overall room reverb characteristic. You also must factor the direct sound SPL vs. reflected/ambient SPL ratio. You can reduce the ambient energy by using absorbers/diffusors within the room at non-first reflection points. Or you can reduce the ambient energy by using absorbers in the path of the 1st reflections, but this is not desirable in certain circumstances[such as the Orion]. You can move the speaker closer to the listening position, thus increasing direct vs. reflected time and reducing the direct vs. reflected and ambient reverb SPL ratios. In a very small room, I don't see how one can ever have proper sound with a speaker such as the Orion, however. By small, I mean for example, 11' x 11'. The minimum spacings could not be achieved. 15' x 15' should be marginally acceptable for proper spacing/setup, if combined with acoustic treatments to control the room reverb characteristics, if it is a room that can be arranged/setup around the speaker system.
-Chris