Floorstander or bookshelf?


Hello everybody,

My current current system is:
-NAD C542
-Naim Nait 5i (VER.02)
-Monitor Audio RS6
The room is around 17MP (5M X 3.5M) /(16ft. X 11.5 ft),speakers being placed along 16 ft. side.

I had recently the occasion to make a comparison of my current speakers with Spendor S3e and Sonus Faber Toy.
To my surprise ,I found that RS6 sound is very "colored" and the bass is boomy vs the other two speakers.
Much more ,I was very impressed by the musicality of Sonus Faber at the point that I am very tempted to buy a pair even they are a little bass shy and very slow for pop and electronic music.
Personally I didn`t like very much the Spendors which I found to dark for my tastes.

- What do you consider that should be more appropriate for my room , a bookshelf or a floorstander?
- Having in mind the positive reviews for RS6,do you consider a downgrade from RS6 to Sonus Faber Toy and if so what would be your recommendation?
kerio

Showing 1 response by drew_eckhardt

>I did not make any treatments.The speakers are placed 5ft.(1.5m) away from the side walls and 1.3ft.(0.4m) in front of back walls with 6.5 ft.(2m) distance between them. I find the bass to boomy for my tastes.

As expected. You're going to pickup substantial gain below 110Hz plus whatever you get due to the listener's rear-wall proximity which is also shorter than optimal.

A short-wall placement with the same speaker separation would make things better.

If you can't do that, a shelving high-pass filter would be a fine idea.

Some speakers (Revel makes a few) have a boundary switch which does this.

>What do you consider that should be more appropriate for my room , a bookshelf or a floorstander?

In-wall. Your speakers aren't far enough off the front wall (about 5') for their front-wall reflections to be perceived entirely as reverberant field, aren't far enough out to develop sound stage depth that you'd loose by going with in-walls, and moving to in-wall speakers will eliminate baffle diffraction effects.

Note that by 'in-wall' I mean speakers with well-braced high quality enclosures that mount in the walls (Triad?), not decorator approved units which rely on the resonant dry-wall cavity.