Overkill for small room

Wow, this a wellspring of helpful info.

One question about damping: is this a function of the amp or the speaker?

If I understand 'good' damping correctly, it involves quickly stopping the woofer's motion when no bass signal is present. Do I have that correct? This would be especially important with larger diameter woofs and subs, no?

Yes the Contour 20i - apologies for omitting crucial information.

I also meant to pose the title of the post as a question, as in "Overkill?" but I forgot the ?

Noobies.....🙄.....what are ya gonna do?

Many thanks for the helpful comments thus far. You've made me feel better already. 

My main concern is ending up with bass that's muddy/boomy/hard to control. With a small room, I won't have all that much space to pull them away from the front wall. They're rear-ported and allegedly require much care in placement to really shine, so I was concerned with distances from the back wall and side wall being problematic. 

Do I turn it up to 11? On rare occasion when the right song deserves it, but most listening is at med to med(+) volume. 

I've not used room correction previously, but I trust it's highly effective since it seems extremely well utilized among forum users here. I imagine there's a learning curve with Dirac/ARC as well.

All advice greatly appreciated thus far. I'm writing down the important stuff.

@sounds_real_audio - I don't feel that the speaker purchase requires a new more powerful amp. If I already had a serious amp I'd very likely keep it, but I'm upgrading from a not-so-robust Yamaha AVR that I'm sure is not up to the task (both from a quality and oomph perspective).

I'm weighing the options between separates and a great integrated. I presume some of you consider "great integrated" an oxymoron 😉, but unfortunately I have budgetary considerations to keep in mind.

@daveyf - yes, it will be a dedicated room, so I'll have flexibility as far as positioning and room treatments without disrupting the living space.

I have zero experience with tube amps, so I'll be starting with AB or D and go from there as I learn more about this world of HiFi and develop a better ear. 

I have a short list already, but opinions on amp choice is welcome too. This forum has infinitely more knowledge and experience than I, but I also realize that opinions vary widely, as does confirmation bias and brand loyalty. If you make a recommendation, please let it be something you know personally. 

Musical tastes are all over the place - Mozart to Metallica, Coltrane to Coldplay, Deadmau5 to Dylan, Bonamassa to Black Sabbath. Lots and lots of blues, both the old guard and newer artists. Good amount of classic rock, alternative, and prog rock too. In short, too many styles to generalize. Not sure if this makes choosing gear more difficult or less!

I guess I'm looking for good balance, tight bass, and revealing detail while avoiding harshness. I seem to be rather intolerant of brightness around the 1KHz to 3KHz range. Not sure if it's my existing room or existing system, thus the desire to relocate and upgrade.

@nitewulf - are any of them on this forum? 😛

Based on advice from you and others, I’ve been paying attention to the WPC specs as impedance gets halved. 

I’m going to stick with SS for now. As with any complex subject, the more you explore the more you realize how much you don’t know. So many rabbit holes. Seems the rabbit holes have their own rabbit holes!

@asctim - interesting advice, as I assumed I'd set up the speakers on the narrow end, but I'll play with both and see what I like better.

Regarding subs, I agree. I've had huge speakers in the past (Acoustic Research TSW 810s I think) that did not need subwoofers! - we used to call them coffins. Anyway, those were tough to move from both a weight perspective and a room mode perspective (had large rear-firing woofers). 

I've since moved to smaller speakers (bookshelf) with a B&W ASW610 sub and I like the flexibility of being able to move things around more easily. As I prepare for my next significant upgrade, Ive been moving things around quite a bit to hear how the speakers and the room sound. When my new, smaller room is ready I can begin experimentation in there. Really excited. Sub is at least 20 years old and well used, so I'll consider replacing/upgrading (maybe 2) into the new space. 

continued excellent advice. I've got a lot to think about prior to the amp purchase, but the research and learning is a big part of the fun for me.  Thanks to all who have contributed helpful advice.

@audiorusty - I'm curious to know what you consider "very loud aggressive music." Do tell. And 4X 12" subs? What is your crossover? Are you feeding them with sub-outs or speaker-level? It must thump, indeed.

Tool has been a fave of mine since Opiate. Big fan of RATM too. 
 

Your sub setup seems quite impressive, even if I only understood about 25% of what you described. I’m sure that processor handles everything amazingly well, but that stuff is WAY over my head at this point. I can’t even decide on what base gear is best for me. The journey continues. 

Hello forum - checking in after completing stage one of the upgrade.

I purchased a used AVM Ovation 6.2ME integrated on US Audio Mart - thanks Michael - which is an absolute beast into 4 ohms. Beautiful clarity and headroom for days. I think it's an excellent match-up to the Dynaudio 20i mains.

However, it was never my intention to run the speakers full-on - even though the extension seems clean down to low 40's - as I've always preferred to get that tight thump from a great subwoofer. The good news is that I can run a great sub from the pre-outs on the AVM. The bad news is that I have no way of setting a crossover point to take some of the low end load off the Dyns. Or do I?

I considered a daisy-chain from the amp's speaker outputs to the sub's speaker inputs, then from the sub's speaker outputs to the mains, but it seems that no sub manufacturer offers speaker-level outputs on their subs these days. Even if they did, I don't know what type of signal degradation might occur in such a setup, or if it's even a wise or feasible option.

Am I stuck with a (killer) amp running my Dyns full-on? Or is there an audio guru amongst us that has a trick they'd like to share?