3 Pi or similar for Small room - Near field listening? [message #96955] |
Fri, 01 September 2023 07:25 |
rongon
Messages: 1 Registered: April 2021
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Esquire |
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Hi, first post here...
I'm curious what the thinking is about speaker size as it relates to room size and volume levels. The background is:
1) I live in an apartment and I can't play music very loud (neighbors). I do love music, though. I was a working musician in my younger days, so I know what live acoustic music sounds like.
2) My living room (listening room) is about 12 feet wide by 24 feet long, with the usual nearly 8 foot ceiling. (Roughly 3.6 m W x 7.3 m L x 2.4 m H)
3) I value midrange clarity and treble 'sweetness' (lack of sibilance or harshness) above frequency extension. I can't hear above about 12kHz, and I don't need (or even want) very low bass response. It only upsets the neighbors. -3dB at 50Hz would work fine for me.
4) I sit only 4 feet from the speakers when listening. That's close to nearfield usage.
5) I would like to use low power vacuum tube amplifiers to drive the speakers. Maybe even single-ended. That means about 5W per channel of power (push-pull EL84-triode or 2A3, most likely).
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I like the results I get with controlled directivity waveguide-equipped speakers. I bought a pair of JBL LSR305P speakers as an experiment and am very favorably impressed with the results, especially for the money. The waveguide/controlled-directivity concept works!
Previously, I was very happy with an old pair of Snell E-III 8" two-way floorstanders. The JBL 305Ps beat them for clarity, though.
I'd like to upgrade from the 305Ps -- significantly.
My questions:
1) Would the 3 Pi speaker be inappropriate for a 4 foot (1.2 meter) listening distance?
2) Does the 1 Pi speaker have a comparable off-axis dispersion characteristic to the 3 Pi's? Or is the dome tweeter much less controlled than the 3 Pi's horn in that parameter?
I don't have a firm bias for/against waveguides vs. dome tweeters, but now that I've experienced what uniform frequency dispersion does in my listening room, I want to preserve that and move up to a lower distortion speaker.
Opinions welcome and any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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