Vintage Advents too big for small room?

Ritualistic audio hoohah? Maybe I need some of that. :-)

Rockvirgo: Getting the Advents up on just any old platform, at least for experimental purposes, is a great idea. I don't have any shelves or dressers in this room, so the Advents or any other speakers would have to be on the floor and vertical, both for space considerations and WAF. The Advents have served me well for 25 years now - I'd never part with them. If I can't make them work in this space, they'll go into storage for the next house.

Plato: I've looked at the VonSchweikerts and the Green Mountains and they're out of my price range even used. The Paradigms just slide under the $500 mark used but are rare. Would the speakers I mentioned above be too much of a step down from the Advents? I realize I'd give up some bass, but the room can't deal with it anyway.

I think the Triangle and the Epos models you mentioned may be a good bet... Also, I just saw a pair of Signet SL-260 speakers on A-gon for a good price, and they could be a very good choice as well.

Armstrod:

Your 12' X 12' room sounds very much like my master bedroom/listening room in my old Astoria apartment (11' X 11'). It's unfortunate that you can not place the Advents horizontally inside of/on top of a bookcase, because that would solve the problem. I do something similar today with my Acoustic Research 302's (24" X12" X12") in a 10' X 15' room.

What would help is to get the speakers off the floor (about 8 to 10 inches) and out of the corners, though they could still be close to the walls. Right now you have your Advents set-up the way we would them set-up in the 70's. A type of DIY speaker stand that would work and would have decent WAF (my own wife really likes them) is a stand made of Armstrong opaque glass blocks. These are the types of blocks that are used in glass walls.

Each block measures 8" X 4 " X 4". Each stand would use 6 blocks and would be 16" Wide X 12" Deep X 8" High, when finished. You would create two rows of 3 blocks each. Each block in a row would be epoxied together (a small dab in each corner) and the two rows would be pushed together. That easy. To finish off the stand, you would need to place a small thin Rubbermaid type mat (12" X 12" size works best) on top of the glass blocks and then place a 12" X 12" marble tile square on top of the mat.

This will give you a smooth surface to place your speakers on. Stable and solid as all out, my cats have yet to topple a speaker in 5 years. The stand looks like an extension of the speaker. Total Cost is under a $100 and it is all available at your local Home Depot.

If you are going the monitor route and this is tough without knowing your equipment ... try the NHT SB2 at $400 list, but generally available at $300. They are an acoustic suspension/sealed box design and will give you a sound closest to your Advents. Because they are a sealed box design, they can be wall mounted or will sit nicely on an appropriate sized wall sconce.

Regards, Rich

Stands is a good idea. And moving them as far away from the corners as you possibly can--is there some room arrangement you haven't thought of that might be a little wierd but would work? I have in a second system of sorts a pair of very cheap but very efficient Radio Shack speakers and when they are in the corners they thump like there's no tommorow. I had Larger Advents for years and they were great speakers, plus, if you can find a way to use them you aren't out the $500--so it's worth your effort. As for a headphone system, sure they are great, I get the "best sound" from my headphones, but I'd rather listen to music in an open space. Good luck!

I love Audiogon. No matter where you're going, someone's always been there before.

I'm definitely going to experiment with the Advents first. Rich, those sound like beautiful stands. If I can get the Advents to sound right, glass stands would be great for a permanent solution.

Anybody ready to argue that smaller monitors would actually *improve* the sound in this room? I'm willing to spend the money if I can gain a marked improvement. For those of you willing to make monitor recommendations, the rest of my system is:

Music Hall MMF 2.1/Shure V15Vxmr
NAD 7140 receiver
Adcom GCD-565 CD player
New Advents, updated drivers as outlined above

MMF 2.1 to be replaced by modded Thorens TD 150/Rega RB250/Shure V15 when I can find the time to complete the mods.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

David