Sealed alternatives to the Zaph Audio sr71?

[anonomouse]

Hi all,

I'm fairly new here and to diy audio in general I have been doing a bit of research and found that the sr71 is very close to my price point, and what I wish for in terms of audio quality. It also is available with a pre-assembled crossover which helps me out quite a bit.

My problem is however that I live in a tiny apartment 200sqaure feet. I will need to place the loudspeaker about 1 foot next to an unmovable built in cabinet, in addition the back of the speaker will at max be roughly 1.5 feet from the back wall. Would such a placement be acceptable for the rear ported sr71? Or, do I need to move to a front ported or a sealed speaker?
here is a rough schematic, please forgive my scaling, I'm limited by the size of the text window.

                       |-----------------------------------Back wall----------------------------------------------------
    Cabinet        |       
                       |   
                       |      xxx                                          xxx 
                       |         xxx <----- speakers------> xxx 
|----------------------|         xxx                                          xxx 
|   
|                       <-1ft->
|<----3ft----------->   
|  
|  <-------wall extending out roughly 8 feet
|
|  
| --------------------- 
| | 
|                     | 
|                     | 
|                     | 
|                     | 
|                     | 
|                     | 
|                     | ---------------------------------------------------------|
|                                                                                | 
|              Enormous couch                                          | 
|                                                     Me sitting             | 
|                                                     on me bum           | 
|                                                                                | 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

[sreten]

Hi,

I really cannot see going sealed helping the issues much,
toeing in the speakers to cross in front of you might help.

rgds, sreten.

[Bill Fuss]

Stuff the ports if the corner becomes a problem.

Best, Bill

[crazyhub]

The real problem is you'll get an unbalanced image because of the different room load left and right of the speakers; so an amount of damping material stick on the left cabinet could help.
Filling 3/4 of the SR71 enclosure without touching the vent length may work more finely for such a speaker placement.

[anonomouse]

thanks all. It's good to know that this will be an issue regardless of wether it is a front port, rear port, or sealed speaker. I was considering a much more expensive sealed design as I thought it would eliminate this issue. I'll see how they sound and then stuff accordingly.

[TerryO]

One of the Contestants of last Summer's speaker contest brought a pair of sealed floorstanding SR71's and they were thought to be pretty good. I believe that he built them for his HT and also used a Sub. Unfortunately, I don't have the frequency response measurements of the FR71's.

FWIW: Sealed mains are generally considered to be easier to integrate with subwoofers.

Best Regards,
TerryO