If they are rear ported placing them against the front wall will negatively effect the bass response. I call it the front wll because it's in front of you.

If you want speakers that you can place against the front wall you need either sealed box or front ported speakers.

Hi Bill

Are you using this for basic listening with the rest of the room used as a living room?

14 x 14 is not anything to worry about if the room is constructed out of wood studs and drywall. If plaster walls then you have issues that you'll want to work around. Also if your not that concerned about a super deep sound stage those areas could be nice for corner loading with a little playing.

Is the floor wood or carpet, and do you have a basement underneath or on a slab?

As position said, ports can get tricky but there are tricks to try if you run into problems.

Hi Bill

Thank goodness you have the hardwood floor and joists underneath it. This many times saves the day for plaster walls.

You say you already have speakers and a system to put in there? But, your not sure how they will work, right? or Are you getting something new to put in there anyway?

Here's why, if you let me know what you have and some idea of the conditions, where the house is (part of the US) (if wanting to stay private you can visit me on http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/  and let me know), your system and I might have a few other questions for you, I will be able to walk you through your sound.

If Plaster walls BTW they are probably plaster/lathe which have a completely different sound than studs/drywall. These can get pretty screwy because of the high level of reflection as opposed to a wall that has more flex. Here's one secret for you. If you deside to cover the floor don't put in a carpet but instead a rug in the middle of the room leaving at least 3'-4' of hardwood exposed around the room. This will burn your center node but leave the sound of the wood for flavor. You want that flavor to offset your plaster walls.

Ok now let me hit you up with something. If this is a living room with a typical furniture presence I would consider going with a satellite/sub setup. One of the worse things people do is try to get speakers to work when the speakers are floor standing and firing into furniture. If you mounted book shelf speakers above the furnitures absorbent range maybe 4 to 5' at the bottom of the speaker to floor and turn the speaker up side down so the tweeter is on the bottom, then added the sub, you could have a setup that will surprise the heck out of you, and blow away many systems that are trying to make the speakers do something they can't.

Here's the good news, you could get great sound and be under budget if you went this route. Not only would you get a nice balanced sound but also actually have a soundstage to enjoy.

Billiam wrote:

So essentially facing the ports at the wall will negatively impact the sound.  I was afraid of that.  

Any ideas as far as closed boxes or front ported speakers these days?  I am only shopping for book shelf speakers, not towers unless the towers are light, under 30 lbs. each.  Tired of moving heavy speakers these days.  Budget is topped at $500.00 USA.

 

The only credible thing I or any else should be saying about choosing speakers is, "Make the effort to audition some speakers". Anything else that anyone says is nothing more than smoke blowing. Only your ears can help you decide what speakers you want to live with.

Hi Bill

Smart move! You will not regret the sat/sub decision. As far as speakers go, I design them on a custom basis for folks and in this price range I look at speakers that can be moded into super speakers. Not to down play the ones you have mentioned but in my book the best sounding speaker by far under the $500.00 mark with even a little moding is the Dayton Audio B652. They cost next to nothing and with some tiny mods (you could do them) this speaker will put to shame many any where near the $500.00 range.  They are extremely easy to voice and if you mounted them with an omni bracket could set them out from the wall a little and make them sing. I have BTW moded some of the others on your list but found the DA's to be easier to voice as the other speakers already had their locked in sound.  One thing you don't want is a speaker that fights the space your using to play it.

I don't want to give away my trade secrets but I would be happy to help you mod these if you wanted to. Even if you didn't make the tweeter change I do or the hardwood front baffle, because the woofer is running with only a cap the tricks I'll show you will allow you to make these sound really nice. Basically what I would do is have you remove (carefully) the pads on the woofer, pull out the poly fill, and voice the inside of the cabinet with water based poly.  There is something that happens fairly magical with this cabinet once voiced that makes this woofer do things you would never guess.  Stock these speakers sound a little wooly but voiced a whole new speaker.

Here's a link so you can see what I do to mine http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/t72-mga-speakers  but you don't need to go that nuts. Even doing a basic tune up would make these pretty nice.

I also have an idea for you about a CD player that is a best kept secret.

JoeE SP9 wrote:

Billiam wrote:

So essentially facing the ports at the wall will negatively impact the sound.  I was afraid of that.  

Any ideas as far as closed boxes or front ported speakers these days?  I am only shopping for book shelf speakers, not towers unless the towers are light, under 30 lbs. each.  Tired of moving heavy speakers these days.  Budget is topped at $500.00 USA.

 

The only credible thing I or any else should be saying about choosing speakers is, "Make the effort to audition some speakers". Anything else that anyone says is nothing more than smoke blowing. Only your ears can help you decide what speakers you want to live with.

And I might add, that just because you hear a speaker in a store or a friends room this means little when you get it home.

For my own listening I have not owned a stock pair of speakers for over 15 years easy. Not saying any of these speakers are bad, it's just that every room and system is that different.

I really don't see what you are facing though is all that tough.

Hi Bill

I do a mod, but for the sake of not promoting my services and breaking any forum rules I'll show you how to do a simple one that any one can do with a screw driver a can of spray poly and a pair of pliers. If you want to go further you can find me on the web pretty easy. You'll be surprised though by the simple mod that you do.

Hi Bill

Yes, I'm listening to a pair now, without a sub. You're going to find a lot of speaker companies in the future go from heavy over built speakers to more resonant cabinets. The industry is still young and foolish at times lol. In my design I don't like the sound of heavy cabinets at all, the sound often gets stuck in the cabinet and a lot of problems start. What's worst is the heavier the cabinet the harder it is to work with the room.  I've been making speakers for over 30 years now and have not had cabinets  fall apart unless very miss treated like any thing else built. If you care for your speakers like an instrument they will be find.  Also once you poly the inside the cabinet becomes much stronger, like twice as strong no kidding.  I have to study wood strength cause I send it all over the world so I'm pretty up on it. Wood strength when rough or green (containing moisture) is a lot more weak than wood that is dried and treated with a good poly finish. You'll want to use a water based finish on the inside of the cabinet when you get it. Don't forget to do where the drivers attach. Trade secret here lol: You don't want to use oil finish on speaker cabinets unless you are sure that a speaker is going in the exact same humidity when played. That's a freebee. Two coats is ok, 4 coats is better. When you put on the finish let it dry good between coats, don't get in a hurry. The longer you let each coat dry the better the sound and the stronger the cabinet.

Let me go into speaker cabinets real fast before someone jumps in and makes a scene about how you have to build them like tanks. This is based on my experience and the many who have talked with me about their same findings.

Speaker designing has been going down some weird paths for an awful long time and anything that "they" don't understand (along with a lot of audio engineering type designs) they wave the distortion flag. It took me a big factory and engineers on staff and a ton of money in test equipment to realize this is BS. I've had to design and redesign this industry by myself to discover that there are tons of myths and egos who can't take the time to find out for themselves what is and isn't.  Sadly this hobby has many in it that only go as far as their training has taken them and haven't really answered the call of the listener.  There are designers who are absolute God sends to the cause but many (even with a lot of years in) who are still wearing diapers.

to answer the strength issue

You will find speaker designers screaming about wall thickness on one side and you will find the most solid drums in the world being built at 7mm, 1/4" guitar bodies, and cellos just as thin. What makes those instruments distort is not the thickness but when they are out of tune. Speaker designers have been making speakers out of tune for a long time. Some of the best sounding speakers I have ever heard have a baffle of .25" thick. Do they resonate? You bet, all speakers resonate.  Music is vibration and without it we wouldn't hear the drivers at all. A talented speaker designer to me is one who can couple the driver to the cabinet and create between the cabinet and drivers a speaker that performs much like the instruments being played.  When you mod these cabinets, they're going to get much stronger and resonate much better than the typical speaker. If you want to go even further look here again and read how to make them tunable. http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/t72-mga-speakers . Now your talking! If you want more strength to the cabinet put a tuning bar in it. But honestly for what your doing I don't think you need to go that far to make these do some great things.

I invite you to read my writings on my forum, on here, other forums or what others have found about free resonance and tuning. There are some things that this industry has tried to do that don't add up. I have always believed that you have to make music to replay it. I completely got off the audiophile boat ancor yacht when it came floating by cause while the folks were talking about how the sound was getting better I heard it getting worst, I wasn't alone.  This industry (in the middle of the music industry boom) went from 250,000 thriving hobbyist (I don't have the numbers obviously) to maybe a 4th of that in 15 years. There are people who stand on their soap boxes and say why, but I think it's clear. There's only two reasons why a booming industry that has to do with music would get smaller.  One, they've over priced themselves out of a market, and two they weren't able to make improvements in the sound as promised.

When you get these speakers do a before and after. Listen to them stock, then listen to them voiced in. If you have any questions along the way you can get a hold of me if you miss me here. But I think it would be really cool to see you tune these and blow peoples minds :)

I can guarantee you this. The orders for the DA B652 are about to go up.

Hi Bill

Yep, give a peek at what I do with it and see what you think.  I've looked at some of the changes people have made to them. Kinda funny I think.

When I first got them I was actually hunting for a cabinet like this that I could make into a 5.25"  tunable mod, but after a got them I liked the way the woofer reacted to the voicing and kept using it. Kinda reminds me of an old sounding Vifa of fame years ago.  With the cabinet stock you don't really get the clarity no matter what you do, but once voiced, hello, whole new ball game. I personally don't use this tweeter but if you were thinking of those other speakers you really can't go wrong trying this tweeter.

One thing that I definitely don't like about the "audiophile sound" is the squeezed closed in a box sound.  Sounds like tin cans and drives me crazy. That's what happens to this woofer if you cross it over. People crossover things to death and by the time their done the speakers sound like robots trying to be real. I let the cabinets do the work. I want a guitar in the corner of my room not a robot. Most of my clients choose open over closed, but if you did make these tunable you could do either.

Also when you get to my forum read about the CD player most of these guys use.

Hi Bill

Well you might like one of those then, I don't know. I am familar with the speakers you mention and although I don't want to down any specific models or brands, for my own listening I can't stand the sound of raw MDF cabinets or beding foam or poly stuffed in them. That sound is missing so much of the music, and what is left is so colored that you have to crossover them to death and you still don't get the missing music back. Really any company that says kill the inside of a cabinet I loose interest in. I have studied the inside of cabinets extensively on going now forever even the lastest models, that's pretty much what I do.

generally speaking to other readers also

On the acoustical forum here you'll see experts say how bad foam is acoustically in a room. I agree with this. Foam and other dampening materials remove and distort sound. If that happens in your listening room imagine what happens to the room inside of your speaker filled with this. Take a room and put in foam and it falls apart, take a guitar and put it in and it falls apart, take a speaker cabinet and put it in and yes, it falls apart. Why some designers or engineers can't hear this when it is so obvious makes me question how they are actually testing the sound of things. So much so that I visit speaker testing facilities and pretty much freak out. Then, I read home engineers do testing and freak out more. I grew up around testing and have been a part of it my whole life, and speaking for myself I would much rather trust someone who knows how to engineer by ear over a mic and computer anyday of the week.

This is a fact, I have never seen a speaker test that was able to be duplicated in two different locations. No one has ever been able to do this for me, and I have not been able to do it, and I've been with some of the smartest guys out there.

Sometimes, many times, this industry swings so far into the testing by mic and computer that the end result sounds nothing like live music. It's like the testing instead of starting from live (controlled live) and open and tuned in (like a musical instrument), these guys start from dead and then start twisting the frequencies around. It freaks me out a little and many others too with the way loose cannon designers who don't listen but only use their mics and out of tune conditions to come up with "their" sound or spec. There are some big problems that come from the lack of listening and a lack of a tuned environment to do the testing in and you can really hear this in speaker designs. Bad practices come out of this like, why would someone restrict the cabinets and then restrict the drivers from doing what they are meant to do. They say they do this so to remove distortion but they create the distortion to begin with. Then what happens is the driver companies start to build the restrictions into the drivers themselves, not allowing the drivers to make clean motions and limit the performance of the basket itself, which in turn distorts the drive cause the basket is touching the speaker. I understand what their trying to do as I sit with piles of drivers taking them apart after listening to them. They're trying to make a de-coupled world where one part doesn't affect another, but this is a losing battle because one part, every part does absolutely not only affect the other parts but makes the other parts.

When you take a driver, any driver, and attach it to a rubber gasket you change dramatically the performance of that driver, then you attach it to raw MDF with screws, which changes everything about the sound of any driver. Then you stuff the box with foam which further deadens the sound of the driver. I'm not even talking the acoustical part yet, but the mechanical function of that driver has completely been altered. People who don't believe this, get out your screw driver and start twisting screws and you will change the sound of the drivers just by twisting screws all day long. Now do something un heard of and remove the rubber gasket. Forget about air leaks try it. The sound of that driver will have turned into a different animal. Put away your mic and listen. You can hear that some things opened up, but you still have the nasty sound of the MDF being part of the drivers performance. Change that MDF to an instrument grade wood (not audiophile buzz word instrument grade wood lol) and listen to that driver direct coupled and you will be in shock. Now learn how to voice cabinets and treat the insides instead of killing them and you are on your way to a good sounding speaker. I didn't say leave the inside reflective BTW, I said treat it just like you would a room tuning the inside so it has a nice even response. If you do this you will find your back wave problem disappeared and your efficiency go up a lot. Your drivers once this is voiced correctely are going to work with ease and the strain on your amps will go away. Now your going to be tempted and should be to buy drivers that are not over dampened.

For those still worried about the cabinets vibrating out of control that's an easy fix. When you brace your cabinets your putting in blocks on the inside. To make a cabinet vibrate properly you don't just want inside pressure pushing out but you want equaly pressure from the outside pushing in. Look at a picture of my speakers or any speaker that has bolts or screws where the heads are applying the outside pressure in. Once you find the equal pressure out and in the cabinet allows the drivers to fire as true pistons and a ton of distortion problems vanish.

Any who don't believe, try it and I'll help if you would like. I absolutely guarantee that this will change speaker designing. First though the distortion bullies need to chill out and let down their guard a little. The way to get rid of distortion is letting those drivers move like pistons and voicing a cabinet to get along with the driver instead of fighting it.

sorry Bill kinda got in speach mode to the general population lol

Hi Bill

I'm not very crazy about the sound of any of the DA kits, so can't help you there.

On the B652 the non-ported version was the only one I was interested in moding so I never did the ported version. As I said earlier I was getting it for the cabinet and ended up liking the mod keeping the woofer.  I personally feel that the moded B652 I described even keeping the tweeter would be the way I would choose to go over the other products you mentioned.

For acoustics I also wouldn't use drapes but a nice bamboo blind. Drapes kill sound whereas the blind will help tune it.

It sounds to me that you are doing a lot of reading which is good, but I would recommend looking into some reading where the approaches to sound are a little more on the musical side than the dampening the sound side. You'll find that there are basically two camps, one that comes more from engineering on a hobby level, and the other that comes from more of an engineering/listening side that is shy about the use of anything that will end up killing (distorting) the sound. The second is my camp. Not to be an audio snob, but most of us guys who are designers that have grown out of the kill it camp started there then learned how much the sound got distorted through dampening, too much mass and other things that take away from the music. When I read the forums and hobbyist reviews (many times even pro reviews) I take them with a grain, because I realize they are on the path like we all once were or are still on.

The more we talk back and forth I almost feel like back tracking and saying pick a model and go for it, reason being, if you try to do a mod or kit and are mixing two different design ideas you could end up with a real mess. You have one guy (me) telling you open things up, and others saying close things down by recommending drapes, and saying the cabinet is too resonant and I'm sure will say throw foam in the cabinet, glue gaskets and all the stuff that leads to in my book distortion. The flip to this is I hear you describe the sound you want and like and think, man if you pursue tuning in your system and room by learning a little more about voicing the two you will end up with something really enjoyable. Maybe you should keep this thread here but also start a thread over on tuneland where you can talk to guys who are doing this and ask them questions about tuning in their system.  just a thought

Your sounding like a "Tunee" already :-)

One of the things I like most about being a Tunee is there is no, you gotta listen this way.  Instead it's about exploring how much music is there through uncovering the layers and clouds. Once someone gets to a certain level they (as you will read) go off in their own world creating the right sound for them, but having the tools of listening a little more refined.

"everything affects everything else"