No Room Corners

[Tamaki]

I'm looking for a full range project and I think my living room will dictate what kind of enclosure I need to build. I want to hear your thoughts on the matter.

The room is 12'x17' with 8' ceilings and a listening distance around 10' to 12'. 8' or 9' separation between speakers is feasible the problem is the corners. To the right is a small (4'x4') hallway and to the left is the stair. I can't move the speakers to the other end since I'd have no place to put the couch.

The amp is a TubeLab SSE so maybe 4 or 5 watts of power and an 8 ohm impedance. It's okay if the woodworking is fairly complex but it doesn't need to be.

I was looking at something like the louts^2 or the Coniston^2 perhaps with both drives facing forward.

What would you recommend for for this room?

[preiter]

The bigger issue I see is that it looks like one speaker will be up against the wall and the other will have lots of space behind it. That will make for uneven baffle step response.

[planet10]

Originally Posted by preiter

That will make for uneven baffle step response.

The room will have to be lived with no matter what. I think one of the Chang^2 with side mounted driver might well be less affected. I'm gonna guess with side driver on the outside with a fair amount of toe-in.

dave

[Tamaki]

Won't the side driver on the right be kind of wasted firing into the small hallway?

I hope you'll forgive my ignorance but I'm not sure what the side drivers are accomplishing.

All those years of undergrad physics I took are great for things like quantum mechanics but not really helpful with acoustics like this.

[planet10]

Maybe, maybe not. It's largest role is bass below the baffle step where the hallway makes little difference.

dave

[Rudolf]

There are options to make the loudspeakers see some more symmetry:

[Tamaki]

Thanks for the input.

All the other rooms are smaller with more complex shapes so I will just have to try different room treatments to make the most of what I have.

[GM]

I hate these layouts! A high degree of directivity is required for best performance, but there's not enough room depth to support any useful horn size, so a large coincident two way driver ($$$) is required with a foam or similar baffle extension combined with BLH floor loading being a small 'FR' driver ~equivalent.

GM

[Tamaki]

Horns would be wonderful and my wife would kill me. A medium size tower with a nice wood veneer she would tolerate.

Mentioning the coincident driver made me second guess my approach. Am I going the right direction with full range drivers? I built the amp and the B1 preamp with the idea that everything would be minimal and simple, no crossovers, no bi-amping, minimal components. I knew that some music might not sound as good but I could always try adding a sub later if I thought it would help. A lotus^2 could be build for under $300 and seemed like a good balance of cost, sound quality and directionality.

[planet10]

IMHO you cannot beat the value provided by the best of today's full-ranges.

dave