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How to choose speakers that won't overpower your room?

I am considering buying new floor standing speakers to replace my kef reference ones stand mounts and I'm wondering how to avoid buying something that overpowers my room. My room is fairly small 12 1/2 by 11, And I listened at fairly low volumes mostly jazz and some rock.

I will use Sonus Faber as an example, I'm thinking the Olympica Nova 2 or Nova 3 might be a good fit and I also look at the Serafino, and think that would be very nice as well, but I have no idea if these would be too much for my room. They all look good on paper. And yes, I realize that I have to go listen to these speakers I've never even heard them before, but still auditioning them at a dealer or somewhere else is not the same as putting them in your small room.  Are there any technical details or cue that would tell me whether or not the speaker might be too much for my room?

Bonus question I am going to AXPONA next week is there anything that I absolutely should hear when I am there?

zlone
ashoka
107 posts
 

You need front ported loudspeaker, try triangle borea BR4.

zlone OP
1,357 posts
 

Sorry for disappearing, busy weekend. Thanks for all of the suggestions. I recently ran REW on my room, and room treatments are in order, maybe I should start there.

I am not at all unhappy with my KEF's, but always thinking I can go up a notch or two in the quality of the sound and smaller floor standers seem like the best option.

I am sure I will get more ideas this coming weekend. 

zlone OP
1,357 posts
 

I forgot to comment that I did recently add my REL 7i into the mix, but even though it blended well, the quality of the bass seemed sub-par to that of the KEF's. Does that make sense? I pulled it back out.

rbull11
74 posts
 

I have aprox. the same size room 12 1/2 x 12 1/2, I’m running AE 509’s, they’re not overpowering at all and I only have them 4 inches from the rear wall. The longer I play them, the more I enjoy them. If you have a chance to audition the AE 509’s or the AE 520’s check them out.

sawbuck
27 posts
 

Big speakers in a small room requires placement testing.

My La Scala's are in a 11X12 room with speakers on the short wall and my listening position putts my head less than 6 feet away.

I have two Amazon absolution panels 2x4  2 inches thick, sitting on top of the couch behind my head.

My listening level is generally below 70 htz,

When first moving into our unit I was worried that the La Scala's would not work, I also use a old 1970 Velodyn 15inch  Sub

Biggest problem was speaker positioning. the smaller the room the less flexibility you have in positioning, Mine are now 3 inches from back wall and slightly toed in.

I did loose some sound stage depth, but the sound stage is rock solid .

My system starts with a Raspberry Pi with a PI2AES hat the provides I2S out via HDMI limited to 24x192, 2 terabytes of digital music extracted to CD standard 16x44.1. The I2S output goes to Pontus 2 12 th ver2, XLR  out to a Schiit Freya S ( non tub ) RCA out to a Decware Torii Jr Ver2

BTW  PI2AES is a recent change from Audirvan Studio on a PC with USB out to Pontus Dac. The Raspberry solution is not a dramatic change but it is noticeable, sound stage strengthened and overall sound placement within the sound stage

 

Enjoy the music 

 

 

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