Huge sound, small room

[dwk123]

I guess my reaction to all this is - What is wrong with mini-monitors in the nearfield?

I've got my new ACI Sapphire XL's set up nearfield in a very tough room (7' wide, ~15' long). Speakers and listening spot are roughly at thirds, so the speakers are ~5' out from the back wall, and the listening seat is another 5' from there. The speakers are hard-up to the side walls, and toed in heavily so they cross *in front* of the listening seat. 2" acoustic foam on the wall right by the speakers. The results are very very good. Spacious soundstage, good precise imaging. Maybe not the absolute most holographic I've heard, but nothing to complain about at all.

The XL's really are very good, but they use the 5" Revelator woofers and Scan 9500 tweet, so that setup would blow your budget. For $400 though (assuming you cross to the subs actively) there are a lot of candidates in the 5-to-6 inch 2-way that might work.

[bjackson]

I guess I want to make big speakers because I have these 4 RS270's sitting around and it seems a shame not to use them.

I have Aurum Cantus G2Si's also sitting around, and it seems like I pick out a good midrange and I gots a speaker.

But it's a speaker designed for a much larger room, but whatelse do I do with them, because I'd rather not sell?

[s_zimble]

Hi,
I would come backtp your original challenge of small room, limited space, open sound. I would stay simple here: single full range, no sub-woofer. In a small space you don't need pounding bass but but well defined bass sounds. Keep your RS270s for a future project. I am working on some ideas just for a situiation like yours. I would recommend trying a folded TQWT with FE103Es. There is a handy spreadsheet by John Rutter to approximate the interior dimensions. I made a pair with lesser drivers (old JBLs) just to see how small and inexpensive I could go and get a satisfying experience. I was very impressed with the results, although I will eventually upgrade the drivers in these enclosures. I was thinking to modify the design to have a bottom or rear facing mouth vent to make them a little less directional. But they still have a nice recognizable stage and good imaging (better when pulled away from the wall, but still good with a 1 foot space). These enclosures are elegant and small (for a TL!!) at only 22 inches high. Fostex also has an interesting BLH plan for the FE103. Might be a good project.
Best of luck.
Stuart

[Scottmoose]

If you decided to buy a couple of FE103Es (and why not -they're stunning) then... that Fostex Factory horn design -you might not realise this (not many do) but you can double it a la Cain & Cain Double BENs to interesting effect. Gains 6 db of efficiency and couples better to the room. Looks impressive too! Just remember to keep the original compression chamber volume, or only fractionally increase it. I've tried it -it's different, and it works -one of the better psedo horns around I think. Huge soundstage, amazing imaging. There's probably only a couple of pairs like this in the world, so you'd also have the satisfaction of doing something very different! Alternatively, you could double a Buschord MK2 in the same way...

Best
Scott

[s_zimble]

Hi Scott,

You are refering to the double horn design where one is on its head....one above and one below. Right?? This is very interesting, especially your reported increase in sensitivity but it is double the height, No?

Cheers, Stuart

[Scottmoose]

That's the downside unfortunately. I was forgetting you had height limitations for the cabinets...

[Josephjcole]

Originally posted by bjackson
I guess I want to make big speakers because I have these 4 RS270's sitting around and it seems a shame not to use them.

I have Aurum Cantus G2Si's also sitting around, and it seems like I pick out a good midrange and I gots a speaker.

But it's a speaker designed for a much larger room, but whatelse do I do with them, because I'd rather not sell?

Well if you already have the G2Si's and a subwoofer I would definatly take advantage of what you've already got. Personally if I were in your shoes I would buy a pair of Fostex fe168e sigmas. You could then put them in a sealed enclosure with a simple first order crossover to the Aurum Cantus G2Si's where ever you saw fit (7-10kHz?). You'ld probably want to rolloff the bottom end of the fe168's maybe a passive line level crossover around 100Hz. I think this could lead to a very nice sounding high effeciency system.
Joe