Small room system

[Faizal Ali]

Hello, everyone. I'm a newcomer to this board. Hopefully this question hasn't been asked too often.

I'm in the midst of setting up a horn speaker system for home audio, and am vascillating between a Lowther and an Altec based system. One problem is that my room is a bit on the small side (17'x 11' x 8 1/2'). Because the room is also used a family/TV room, I don't have complete flexibility with speaker placement, and the arrangement that works best is placement of the speakers along the long wall. This puts the listener rather close to the speakers. I believe even an A7 VOTT system would be too large for this room, both sonically and (ahem) visually.

One possibility that looks intriguing is the Petite Onken with the 414-8 driver. Does anyone have experience with how this combination would work in a room the size of mine? If so, what suggestions would you have for the higher frequencies? Any other possible driver/cabinet suggestions?

Thanks in advance, and best wishes for the New Year.

[RogerR]

An interesting alternative cabinet design could be a Karlson Coupler. Info can be found at;
http://home.student.utwente.nl/e.j.j.ulfman/
My main speakers are Altec VOT A5 with a single Karlson used for bottom octive support. I also have a Karlson set up in a mono system for mono recording playback. If I had to lose my A5's for something smaller I would use Karlsons. RogerR

[RonSSS]

Yuo might also look into 604 duplex as well!
Ron

[billfort]

I use 604Gs in a real small room - 11' x 12'. They sound fantastic with a 300B SET amp and must admit this kind of surprised me, as I expected them to sound overpowering and too in-your-face. It did take a little fiddling to get it right though and found I needed strategically placed acoustic absorption panels. I also found they sounded best in the corners - so much so that I am now building vented corner cabinets with same size and tuning as the 620A boxes. Since the 604s where designed for studio monitoring use and probably ended up mounted in-wall, I guess it's not so surprising they can work in small rooms.

Billf

[AllanCT]

I used a pair of A7's in my dorm room at college.

Made a great pair of headphones.

Bunk beds of course....

A studio monitor type cabinet would work fine along the long wall, as would most any Altec floor or bookshelf speaker.

[rolandr]

Faizal you are rightfully concerned about horn enclosures in small rooms since it is the nature
of horns to project and mix more distantly than direct radiators. Your best bet is the model 19.

[Faizal Ali]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I should add, as clarification, that I am quite willing to build my own cabinets (though "able" may be another matter!) so buying a complete intact system such as the 19 is not necessary. The small size and the relative ease of construction of the Petite Onken were reasons I was considering it. As well, the 414 drivers are still relatively affordable.

One thing I am uncertain about: is there any trick to matching the bass components with the HF components? Or is it simply a matter of getting the best HF driver/horn you can and then futzing around with the crossover until they work well together?

[rolandr]

Seems everybody is interested in building cabinets which in the end are a compromise at best. Having personally built many enclosures horn and others including Onken type enclosures I would say avoid it if possible. Refer to Jim D to Roland question in these pages. See if you have infinite baffles available in your sound room. If available use them for the best of all possible results with only minimal work involved. In regards to matching HF and LF output. There are many solutions to this problem and all are good. Using a standard Altec cross over with built in attenuator if not biamping
provides better han satisfactory results. You can use active crossovers and biamp etc,etc.