I currently paly my music from the PC to a Zen Dac V1 to Edifiers S1000db and it’s… well, ok. I find them extremely difficult to place but my room doesn’t help. Sort of a small room with a bunch of naked walls (rented place, I’m not going to nail paintings in there) and ceramic floor.
Speakers are good enough for me to realise I could get more…
Would these solutions be more forgiving with placement and room or just wait until I move for a better place?
Edifier S2000mkIII
Going passive: cheap amp like an SMSL SA300, plus…
Q Acuoustics 3030i (or 3020?)
Wharfedale Diamond 12.1
Triangle Borea BR03
It’s probably a silly list but right now I’m just looking for arguments because I’m not even sure I can ask the right questions. Thanks in advance!
Some general thoughts.
It sounds like you need to deal with the room so 1st thoughts would be to get a rug in front of the speakers and see if that helps.
Since the room is small maybe try some smaller near field monitors and sit closer so the room is less of an issue. If you move to a bigger place you can always add a sub.
Best solution would be an amp or active speakers that allow some dsp correction but that’s not likely to be a cheap option.
no speaker is to big for any room! placement and presentation make worlds. the rug idea is a great start. if you dont care about looks, there are lots of room treatment hacks out there. something as simple as extra blankets on the walls can help. you dont have to nail em either. amazon has lots of cheap foam. and blue tac is cheap. so is double sided tape. its foam, doesnt take much.
edit: linking a great thread on how no speaker is to big for the room
So room is around 35m2 but the speaker space is maybe 25. Isolation and blue tac! That’s a great idea!
What do I want to improve… well, I lack the lingo here… I feel like I don’t get it all in at once. It’s all there but I sort of have to focus on that instrument or that thing happening on the other side to take it in. And that doesn’t fill me with confidence, I never know what else , if anything, the speakers are hiding from me.
Now, I’m no audiophile sitting in front of the speakers doing critical listening. I guess I just want something good enough, easy to set up and forgiving.
Oh, listening at low volume would be important too. I tend to work late into the night quite a lot and don’t want to bother the neighbours. At low volume I feel like my speakers struggle quite a bit, especially because I listen to a lot of classical music, stuff like Mozart’s or Bach’s Masses. It’s very complex music with layers and layers that I know well, so if I’m concentrated on work but I miss something that will immediately pull my attention towards the hardware.
get a rug for that ceramic floor for sure. ceramic reflects everything a ton. you can also use cheap carpet as a rug. find some one throwing out their old carpet for instance. find some cinder blocks from a demoed house for instance, and you have room treatment for free(blocks to hold carpet edges down).
if i sound to ghetto, its because i live inner city. and there are tons of resources for free in any city. and it does not sound like you will be there forever, so giving really cheap ideas to help with the sound treatment while you are there.
have you tried listening to the eddies at a buddies house? somewhere that is a little less acoustically bad as your room sounds like it is atm.
edit: i only mention all of this because really bad reflections in a room can make 100,000$ speakers sound worse then 5$ bluetooth special at walmart.
Some speakers don’t come on song until they get to a certain volume (my old B&Ws had this problem) so I’d look for something that can play well at lower volumes if the Edifiers don’t cut it at low volumes
I recently demoed the Proac tablette 10 signatures and for near field they were fab.(but not cheap)
I’d try the wall and floor treatments 1st before spending big on new gear.
I had them on the top wall… the left speaker gets is too near me and my chair
I tried them on top of shelf on the wall on the left… terrible result even upsidedown and tilted down.
Had them on my desk on clamped mounts. Good if I’m right in from of them.
They are now on my back but it’s by far the best position. The left’s reflex port is facing a shelf and the right one is far away from a heavy curtain I have closing that communication that has no door.
I have to move my chair around that space in front of the speakers and I know from experience a rug makes it very difficult, plus the rug gets eviscerated pretty quick.
I’m hardly on that couch on the bottom right. The little Edifiers are nice for the couple of movies I watch per year, if that…
