Like I described in the title, I’m just worried I don’t have ideal acoustics and can’t do anything about it. I wouldn’t know if it was right if it hit me in the face
Or nearfield listening. Lot going for it.
I have a huge living room as well. I currently have B&W 805’s and dual SVS SB16 Ultras. It’s better than anyone else’s set up I know personally, and in my own opinion it’s adequate. I’ll upgrade to some Focal floorstanding speakers someday, or a pair of 803s. It plays as loud as I would like.
All that to say you should be able to have something that sounds nice. Ideal is a really expensive game.
Room treatment Then multiple subs
Get horns, preferably vintage or Heritage Klipsch - they can fill for as little power as have any speakers I have heard or owned.
I have this issue my room is a little bigger, 20 ft ceilings. The whole ad drape thing and room treatment made me laugh. I have huge picture widows, fireplaces, and columns in my great room. I can imagine my wife listening to me talk about adding drapes … I would be sleeping in the car. I am waiting for ART in DIRAC to mature to see if this works with larger room sizes. Otherwise, it is impossible. I have tried klipsch horns… They blare in a room that size. I think we had JBL. I grew up in the movie theater industry, and they used to have these huge JBL under the curtains for sub (started with esrthquake) for movie buffs. They also had like kbl speakers the same size. My wife, again, wouldn’t budge. Gl on your solution hunting.
Hey, I’d kill for that room. Don’t worry about the dimensions. The 18’ vs 19’ difference for two axes are not ideal because they are so similar, so there might be a bit emphasis on a specific frequency band, so a good parametric equalizer in a digital streamer like Wiim Pro can be used to tone down if some specific frequencies are overpowering because of this. It could boost 30 Hz a lot, so that may get really loud – but nothing a room equalization system or just manual tweaking can’t fix.
For everyone curious about what that looks like: https://share.icloud.com/photos/088snagFWAtHFBWnz8MhLl63A
i do live shows in halls that hold thousands of people. you’ll be fine. Just learn how to eq and a little treatment goes a long way.
I just moved into a new home with a similar size living room(same footprint, but sloped ceiling). I’m loving it! My little single driver horns fill it far better than I ever expected. Try different things and you might be surprised. Cheers!
You’ve got a lot of space to fill and a lot of air to move. My vote is to go big.
I’m sitting in a room roughly that size right now, and my K Horns sound unreal.
I’m sitting in a room roughly that size right now
We have a room about that size, but it has additional issues. The north side of the room is all glass; the south side opens onto two open areas. Short of building walls and losing windows, it is never going to be a great room for critical listening.
Knowing it was going to be a compromise, we added additional speakers. We have a set of fairly large floor speakers and a set of bookshelf speakers mounted high. The room sounds much fuller now, without it looking too odd. We’re still planning to build another room with better acoustics, but the big room is much improved and perfectly acceptable for entertaining and casual listening.
It is time gents, to consider those godzillas like Klipsch Jubilee, JBL everest…cheapo ones like JBL cinema 2 ways 4722n, or studio quality 4367(my main)…
Horns have been filling motion picture theaters before we were born, it will get the job done
Yup, in my big basement I have La Scalas stuffed in the corners 25 feet apart and heresys in the center.
Sorry to be that guy, but there is little place on this sub for a post with a title using offensive language. This should be a safe space for the grey-heads amongst us…
For fucking real?
You have what is likely a good room acoustically. Symmetry and the naturally present large reflecting surfaces (e.g. alcoves), smaller diffusing surfaces (e.g. bookshelves) and absorption (e.g. curtains, furniture, carpet, false ceiling,…), floor and wall construction, etc… will have an influence though. How good a room is acoustically has nothing to do with speakers.
Speakers would need to be appropriately sized to deliver clean sound at standard levels when the listening position is 4m+. away (unless you only listen 1m away at a desk of course). Normal 3 way tower speakers with a pair of 8" woofers should be fine. A 2 way desktop speaker with a 5" midwoofer would not be and even with subwoofers there may well be a hole in clean SPL in the crossover region where music tends to have a lot of energy.
That’s like a dream room dude, you can’t really fix small rooms. Just watch your RT60’s and get some subs.
The nice thing is you can buy large speakers. You don’t need to.
Some thing’s to consider:
Use DSP. There are a range of ways to implement this. REW and DIRAC are options. For not a big investment you can really tune things to your specific space and room issues.
Room Treatment, Quadratic, Skyline Diffusers and Absorption. Not as partner friendly outside of listening room scenarios.
If I had 18ft ceilings I’d probably get a full range speaker with subs and dial it in with DSP.
Room treatment is the forgotten component in many hi-fi setups. I would work on that before getting larger speakers. If the room is hard and reverberant, you’ll need to add thick rugs, heavy drapes, and soft furniture. You should notice sonic improvements as you add these. If that still isn’t enough, there are commercially available acoustical absorber and diffuser panels to quash and break reflection.
And just to add to this advice, there are some such panels that look stylish and can pass as decor pieces.