Large v Small speakers

Some people have a firm preference for speakers sitting at the extremes in terms of size and the argument often settles down to the question of shifting air most efficiently, and effortlessly. But that's far from the whole story.

All speakers are a blend of compromises so perhaps we can start by looking at what people prefer, what they use at home and why.

If you've got a strong liking for a particular type of speaker, lets hear why.

 

I don't care about speakers size. I like speakers that can provide tight bass, do scale and dynamics effortlessly. It just so happens that speakers that can do scale tend to be on the larger side, making me extremely unpopular with SWMBO . If smaller speakers could do scale I'd have happily bought them instead of the large floorstanders I have, or the big cabinets I'm building.

 

I was always a bit swayed by the optics of a large speaker until I first heard the B&W 805N all those years ago. I couldn't find anything they weren't great at, including very large sound staging in what I'd class as a decent sized room. I vowed since then to get myself a pair, went to demo them-used- at a dealer in Glasgow last year. Ended up demoing those, Proac Studio 130's and KEF Q900's. I bought the Proacs without even having to care how much money I was handing over. Since then i've never cared how tall, wide, deep, heavy, how many drivers, what size of drivers a speaker has. I only audition with my ears now. I never look at a speaker and think that 'looks bad'. It's only the sound I care about now as the Proacs look crap!

That said, I do love large floor standers. There's such an intimidation in the room, of two huge floor standers and a pair of enormous monoblocks! But that's just aesthetics. Sound wise, I can't find a speaker I prefer to the Proacs I have now.

 

I went from one extreme to the other — Royd Sorcerers to Tannoy GRFs, a shoebox of 7 litres with a 5.5inch woofer to a ~300-L backloaded horny wardrobe with a 15-inch dual concentric.

I think there's something to be said for both extremes, but for all mid-band clarity and bass agility of the Sorcerers I don't think I could go back to a little speaker again. The GRFs are coloured and not quite as nimble, but they're about 138 times more dynamic.

Joe

 

hi guys, well i guess i have the best of both,one one side i have my wifes system , sony sacd player , mf b200 amp and kef's ls 3/5a's, and my own room t/t lots of vynil, two m6i pwr's a1fbp, a5 dab tuner, 5.5 cdp, x-cans v2's "modified" sen's hd 600's and my beloved ils tannoy floor stands, in the end there is plenty to appreciate both set ups, but they say once a man twice a child so i am again waiting to have the finished version of THE CLIC,

 

I've always found speaker choice the most difficult component of all, because so many compromises arrive at once. Most recently I wanted a "big" sound, with depth and well defined bass, only needing to operate at moderate volume levels and in a comparatively small room. After a while of searching fruitlessly for something just right I went for a second hand pair of Mission 752 Freedoms as a stop-gap. Too large in theory, they're front ported so are kind to the dimensions of the room and their bass is naturally tight. The tweeters are perfectly positioned for seated listening. So, all the benefits of large cabinets but without hitting the downsides. That was a couple of years ago and I've forgotten about my search since.

Sticking with golden era Mission, I also have a wallmounted pair of self-modified 731iSEs for use in a medium sized family room (no chance of floor or standmounts due to small people). While they clearly lack the "big" sound and depth of the others, they have a pleasant amount of thump for such small boxes and are good fun.

Horses for courses really.

Pete

 

Well if I had room, I'd get a pair of Wilson Audio's.....I've listened to a few from the range over the years, and I just love them....but they do like room for the low end to be fully appreciated....as in much larger than the average lounge.

I've listened to small speakers, but find the tend to lose out on low end wallop when you compare to a floor stander...so it really depends on room size and acoustics with you furnishings ect....

I run Living Voice Auditorium and they also like a lot of room...like 2 feet from rear wall...9 feet apart and a slight toe in....and sitting back some 10 feet minimium....then we are talking !

 

A good big 'un will always beat a good little 'un IMO. That's not to say good little 'uns can't be very nice indeed, they can, but they are limited by basic physics: bandwidth, scale, dynamic ability, effortlessness and efficiency all come with size. There is no substitute. Given the choice I'd always go large, and by large I mean a large bass driver in a large box. The fun starts at 12" IMO.

Tony.

 

I think more to the point, a good 3-way should beat a good 2-way.

A big 2-way still has compromises a small 2-way doesn't, mostly in driver integration.

Tannoy are special because they mainly overcome this issue by using a dual concentric design, but they also have compromises mostly because the big cone is a fair way from an ideal waveguide.

I think everything will change in the next 5 years, although audiophiles might not adapt to this and still hold strong outdated opinions. Digital crossovers and fully active design will allow speaker types that currently have compromises to be far closer to the ideal speaker.

 

I'm a bit wary about digital crossovers, more on theoretical grounds than based on actual experience.

 

A friend has been experimenting with digital crossovers, using the trinnov box, extremely encouraging results, Markus what theoretically are your fears ?
Keith.

 

Based upon listening a fair number of speakers, I've come to the conclusion that I want something with dynamics, big soundstage, low cabinet colouration and an ability to work close to room boundaries. In my case, I think I've found the perfect speakers, i.e. the Impulse Ta'us that I've now owned for 4 years.
The dynamics are just typical of what are actually fair low efficiency horn loaded speakers (94 db/w). What is less common is their low cabinet colouration, which most horns suffer from terribly. Lastly, they work find next to walls, unlike seemingly 95% of new speakers nowadays.
I simply haven't heard anything I prefer, regardless of price.
Sure, the Avantgardes are more dynamic, but don't work as seemlessly across their frequency range. Just to finish things off, they have a measured response of -3db at 26hz (IIRC), so they're close enough to be full range.

 

Digital crossovers dont come much better than these

pity they stopped making them,
As for speaker size,all depends what frequency your trying to reproduce,a 1" drivers aint going to do 32hz very well,nor a 18" 18khz

 

I think from small to very large, 5 way horns are the way to go
Lets see what the tapped horns can do.

Digi crossovers and time delays perhaps...

Avantgarde's are pretty bad for the money IMHO.

"What is less common is their low cabinet colouration, which most horns suffer from terribly." I guess you don't mean proper compression driver front loaded horns by that?
You must have been listening to wrong ones or horns stuffed in cabinets to give them WAF?

At the end of the day we should gravitate to what suits us and that might not be practical or even liked by someone else.

 

No surprisingly I agree with Simon's point re two and three way systems.

Pushing a large bass driver, and lets go for the big 12 & 15 inch units, up to cover middle frequencies does bring a number of issues. You can actually get a large driver to deliver enough on-axis output to 2-3kHz to make the transition to the tweeter seamless, but this only holds true for strictly on-axis listening.
Any deviation and problems appear as you encounter the very different response patterns of the two drivers at crossover, though you can mitigate the 'problem' with a waveguide.
I say problem, but of course it needn't be and there is much to be said for tightly controlled forward dispersion and it brings some benefits - chief among them being a reduction in room reflections.
The biggest negative, other than a restricted listening area is the in-room power response which will skew towards the lower frequencies.

But.....you've got effortlessness and potentially low distortion at LF and high SPLs that are very difficult to achieve with small main drivers.

Small drivers allow a more seamless join at crossover, a wider listening area and a potentially better power response if you choose the drivers and crossover point wisely.
But they won't play loud without increased distortion and it is difficult to create a sense of weight and scale.

A good three way seems a sensible way of tackling the potential problems of speakers sitting at each end of the two way scale.

So the perfect speaker system doesn't exist but it would be good to separate the various aspects of performance, look at the individual compromises required and perhaps look at how these impact the final result.

To give a flavour, I'll start with what is perhaps one of the main problems attributed to the old Quad ESL.
HF dispersion is universally described as poor. The mid/tweeter panel beams to such a degree that the speakers are often described as giant headphones.
Bad?
Well no - not IMO.
The tight beaming creates an intense sense of intimacy with the performance and it can almost seem as though you are direct coupled to the music. It can be an incredible experience yet it is apparently born of a major design compromise.
There is of course a downside and the in-room response clearly suffers for anyone not in the hot seat, but what matters is how you individually weight different aspects of performance.

You could say the same for the coherence that comes from the Tannoy DC approach and that might be the thing that pushes your buttons.
Or you might crave the out-of-the-box holography and low colouration that you get from the best mini monitors.
What aspects of the design deliver those qualities?
Let's get under the surface and look at what defines the qualities you like and dislike.

 

I must say I really like this. I know a lot of people would call it 'hi-fi' instead of musical but the openness and texture can be quite an aural thrill.

 

I've recently gone from some extremely small speakers back to extremely big speakers:



The little ProAcs have very wide dispersion and very good driver integration in the conventional sense. The Tannoys are directional, they beam, but to my ears the treble is *much* better and more realistic - cymbals have a real weight and reality to them, there is a real sense of stick hitting metal and you can make a very good guess as to whether the drumsticks have wood or plastic tips. Acoustic space comes through very naturally too. A very clean clear treble, and it represents much that I missed when I mistakenly reverted to Harbeths recently. I just like the way horns do treble more than conventional tweeters.

Paul W Klipsch, one of the most intelligent and inventive audio pioneers IMO, always considered controlled dispersion to be a huge, huge advantage. He built his speakers with exceptional degrees of common sense; he realised that rooms tend to have walls and corners, so better to factor them into the design than fight them, and he realised that the human ear is far better at filtering out late room reflections, so controlling the dispersion - firing the mid and treble directly at the listener - means they get it well ahead of the room reflection. Result: perceptively far cleaner and clearer treble. After living with both Klipsch and Tannoy speakers for several years now I think I've come to the conclusion that I couldn't return to the conventional wide splatter-gun approach to treble. Horns just give a cleaner and more intimate top end IME. The treble from horns reminds me of very good headphones, it has that real clarity and lack of splash.

Tony.

PS As I'm sure Rob will testify my room is well damped and very natural sounding with no obvious reflections / echos / booms etc beyond a very slight rear-wall bass lift (smooth and non-boomy), i.e. I've not come to this conclusion to compensate for a bad room, quite the reverse, it's one of the best rooms I've ever heard a system in.

 

Apart from threads on this, or any other forum,that delve into what I will call computerised music ,I can usually follow the topic and understand what is being said.
But now you have got me stumped.Please,what does "out-of-box holography" mean in relation to the sound of loudspeakers?
Pete.

 

The sound(stage) being detached from the loudspeakers.

Some, the ESL mentioned being one, pin the sound firmly to the drivers.
Others, the classic LS3/5 being a good example, manage to almost disappear acoustically.

 

Excellent sounding room, helped in no small part by being well filled with vinyl