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January 22, 2007 - 8:58am
#1
What's the minimum room size for something like the Monitor Audio RS6?
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If the room is entirely dedicated to your audio and you don't need room for anything else but your gear then you could probably make it work. However, I think you would be fighting against the odds of getting the best sound that you could have in that room.
If you think about it, the speakers would need to be out at least 2 feet from the front wall and 3 would be even better. This would leave around 7 feet from the front of the speaker to the rear wall. If you placed your listening chair against the wall then that would put you around 6 feet from the speaker fronts. Bass would be a bit heavy due to the proximity of the wall and your chair...which means that getting the floor models to enhance the bass without having to have a sub would probably end up giving you too much bass??!! This is saying nothing about a decent distance away from the speakers to allow the drivers to fully integrate.
A pair of monitors that are designed to be used as such and in a near-field environment would most likely integrate better and even give you quite a bit of bass extension due to the room boundaries. Hey, I have no problem getting very satisfying 30hz frequencies from a pair of monitors in a small room...and the speakers are 16" tall.
The only justification I could see in going with floor models in a small room would be as a temporary fix before moving them to a larger room. If you have plans of moving your listening room into a larger room in the near future, for example.
If I were to entertain going with floor models, I would be very interested in making sure that the speakers I chose do not need more than 6 feet or so to fully integrate the drivers. Some need more than that. Still, your room is ideal for near-field monitoring and that's not a bad thing. I love it.
For such a small room, perhaps try speakers that are optimized for nearfield listening and/or use in small spaces in proximity to room boundaries.
I have a room practically identical in size and I had varying degrees of success/failure with floorstanders or even a number of standmounts.
For your described musical preferences, you insist on a floorstander, maybe you could try a pair of Totem Arro?