Looking for a project - large room, large sound


I think a (full) line array with Neo 8 clones and some rather excellent Dayton Audio drivers should work as long as you get the crossover low enough (near 1 kHz) AND have the front baffle extending at least a half-a-foot beyond that short side-wall leading into the hallway.

GRS PT6816-8 8" Planar Slim Tweeter 8 Ohm

Dayton Audio DSA175-8 6-1/2" Designer Series Aluminum Cone Woofer

A miniDSP (2-channel) per loudspeaker should work well (allowing for easy eq.) and with some modest measurement (like a miniDSP uMIK-1) should allow you to get a decent result.
 
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The basement space would seem more amiable to room treatments, etc. Also, given the location of that Scotch collection, I would likely prefer to spend more time down there! :D

That is where we spend most of our time. Those are all empty's and that was the day we brought home the Balvenie display which has since moved to a different location.

Besides music, Bourbon, Scotch, and Whiskey is another big hobby of ours. These pics are a few weeks old. We just built a poker room and finished it about 2 weeks ago.

I would say this is our pride and joy and another hobby we both share. We never were really big drinkers but 4 years ago we bought a bottle of Basil Hayden and it has turned into this:

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I understand the 3/4 way may be the better choice.

So Plan B...The basement space is much larger, ceilings are only 10' but I've got tons of room. The Salks work for one big reason the drivers are up high as we have a section of the couch about 2' away from the left speaker. We have thought of removing that if we moved to a different speaker.

I could move them upstairs and build something for downstairs. This is that space.

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in all cases it is well worth doing the math first

first reflections calculator
 
I have heard the Kef LS50 on many occasions and I do agree they sound o.k. but rather small. That's not so strange considering the miniature size of the woofers in them.
Best I have heard them was in an active three-way system. This guy had them combined with a good 12" woofer (woofer, not subwoofer, big difference). He stuffed the bassreflex port of the LS50 and crossed them at 250Hz. Now the LS50's are voiced as a small loudspeakers which means they start to sound a little dull when the frequency range is extended towards the lower end. A cheap ribbon supertweeter on top of them finished it off.
The sound, miles ahead of what the ls50 alone is capable of while still having the advantage of the coaxial design in the most important frequency range. In fact, it was the first time I could listen to a pair of LS50 for longer than 15 minutes without becoming fatigued because of a lack of chestiness and low bass and actually toroughly enjoyed them. Switching back to the LS50's full range was like switching from a big floorstander to a bluetooth loudspeaker.
 
DIY

Anytime I have heard Magnepans or electrostatics sounding really good, they were way out in the middle of the room... 1/3 of room depth behind the speaker, 1/3 between speaker and listener, and 1/3 behind the listener. I imagine it would be true for most open baffle designs.

I completely agree with your comment. I've owned a bunch of them, and never put them closer than 4' from the back wall.

For the OP, I'd lean towards open baffle, or dipole like several people have mentioned.
 
Lots of great recommendations all round.

I have a slightly different take. Building woofer modules to complement the mids and highs of the LS50 meta, and effectively turning it into the Kef Blade large siblings.

A large part of the big speaker sound is related to the low end output and BSC. Having a dual woofer source per side, one above and one below the coax would also improve the in room bass performance with vertically distributed sources.