Advice for quite small room setup /desktop

[Bill Trumendous]

Good evening guys,

I want to thank you so far for the lot of love an input you bring up to the forum. I've already read through a lot of threads, but so far i could not find the answer so far.
I hope you could give me some advice/ a direction i can go to.
My situation at the moment is the following: The room measures are ~5m (length) 3~ broad and about 2 m height. (16,4 ft x 9,84ft x 6,5ft). Besides it is "crowded" with shelves and my desktop.
I am searching for a solution (i planned to place the speakers onto the desktop) which is suitable for the setting, but also versatile enough, to lets say to be able to place them into a (smaller) living room to function well. (As I probably will have to move to another apartment in 1-2 years, it is also a reason to be quite versatile). Desktop measures are: 160cmx80cm (5,2ft x 2,6ft)
Another point I have to consider is, that there are neighbors below/above and the walls are quite bad (the neighbors below already complained that we are walking "too loud").
I want to connect the system to a regular Laptop/ PC (maybe also to a Raspberry-Pi etc.), so therefore i probably need some kind of amplifier/ external sound card as well?
So now the final question would be: what would be the best matching speakers (and amp etc.) for this setting and also for a maybe slightly different future setting?

A first thought were the Edifier MR4 (as they recently were quite cheap to get), but these were recommended with a sub. As i described above, i think a sub would get me in some trouble.
Another recommendation i read was the "Kali LP-6 v2". As i live in Europe/Germany, there is also the possibility to get hands on swissonics.

My budget is around 500 $/€. Around is meant as: if it is a bit above but worth it - i can live with that. But unfortunately i am not able to afford a system around ~1000+.

The main purpose would be listening to music ("unfortunately" quite a diffuse mix of rap, metal(all kind of directions), hardcore (punk, metal, techno), house, classics, a little bit of jazz...) , some stuff on youtube and maybe sometimes a movie. So to have some dose of bass would be charming.

I hope this is the right place to write the question and i hope it is not that confusing while reading.
Looking forward for your suggestions.

Cheers

 

[HeadDoc12]

I encourage you to check out Vanatoo. They make two different models, and both are excellent.

 

[Brian Hall]

Have you considered a headphone setup instead of speakers? If you are concerned about bothering neighbors, that would take care of the issue.

 

[ZolaIII]

Kali LP 6 V2 and something like Creative G6 for if you are lucky you're budget along with EQ-APO and lot of work on DSP-ing the room. It's gonna be over the budget with measurement microphone (UMIK-1 preferably) and don't expect lots of low bass or sub bass which you can't afford to have in the first place thanks to situation (flat, walls and neighborhood). So if that's what you desire please consider headphones.

 

[Bill Trumendous]

Hello, thank you so far for the rapid replies. Of course headphones would be the most obvious thing - and i already thought about getting some good ones, but (especially) in summertime for me personally headphones mostly are very inconvenient. I usually feel pressure on my head after a while and i am sweating - and due to the way my ears are built - they tent to react and get jammed after a while if i overdo headphones (especially in ears of course). As i am sitting (and standing) most of my time (home office) at my desk, i tend to stand up/ use a gymnastic ball to bring some dynamic into my position to prevent back pain. I think that headphones somehow would hinder the freedom of movement - if that makes sense?
To see where i stand now: I mostly use the speakers of the laptop/ monitor, which is obviously quite horrible and not very satisfying.
Therefore i hope you can see that probably any speaker would be a upgrade already. But i didn't want to buy just some random 30€ speakers which would not last very long and won't be enjoyable at all. As for the neighbors: I think they should be fine as long as i am not tuning it up that much?!
As i understand it right, the measurement with the UMIK-1 would be some kind of "fine tuning", but i guess this would come after a while and as a base/start solid speakers would be the first step?
Anyway i thank you for your inputs already,
Greetings

 

[ZolaIII]

Even your room is long enough that fundamental first room influenced room peak is under neath the speakers response and can complement them you really, really still wish to have it under control along with the rest of the response and adopt it future to desired listening level. To do all of that you need measurement microphone and you can use free software for measuring and DSP processing sync you will do reproduction from PC/laptop. Recommendation is REW and EQ-APO (on Windows only regarding APO or something else if it's Mac). For the first time you can feed speakers from on board audio output if it's not really horrible and buy a DAC or something which suits your needs and you like later on rather then skipping the mic.

Have a nice time and welcome to ASR.

 

[Bill Trumendous]

Hey thank you for the welcome an the input. Regards the Vanatoo speakers: They look pretty decent, but as far as my search reached, they are not available here in Germany .(at least not at the moment?) Maybe some kind of "direct ordering" would be possible, but then the shipping costs (plus taxes etc.) would probably be almost the price of the speakers.

Greetings

 

[Apesbrain]

My budget is around 500 $/€. Around is meant as: if it is a bit above but worth it - i can live with that.

Klipsch makes a couple models of small powered speakers with USB input for PC, optical input for TV, and bluetooth for phone. If putting on a desk, I'd probably also get some stands (should help reduce sound transmission to neighbors).

 

[Bill Trumendous]

Hi all, thanks again.
There is at the moment also a sale for the "IK Multimedia iLoud Micro Monitor". Would that be also a good choice?
If i remember it properly, some guys here wrote that they are also quite decent, also in case of the bass.
But is it really possible that they have more proper bass, than e.g. the Kali LP 6V2? Out of a naive thining i would have said,
that due to the volume of the speaker and the lower frequency border, the Kali would have a more proper bass than the IK?
Or is it a bit too naive ?

Greetings

 

[AnalogSteph]

Ah, the joys of living in old houses that predate modern building regulations. Is yours 100+ years old? Could very well be going by your description, although I wouldn't rule out the 1950s either. You can try placing something heavy exactly in the middle of the room, that should make the floor a fair bit less resonant. Otherwise it tends to behave like a big drum membrane. Old wooden flooring may never become very good though.

Anyway, you have yet to mention a key parameter - listening distance. Directly at a desk you can get away with 3" class speakers much more easily than if elevated volume throughout the entire room is required. Conversely, at half a meter or less a 6.5" class speaker may already start "falling apart" simply due to woofer-tweeter spacing, and you are going to notice hiss much more easily. Even within the same size class, some models will be more suitable to nearfield use than others - they generally have minimal driver spacing and small / shallow waveguides at best. (See e.g. Nubert nuBoxx A-125 pro, Presonus Eris E5, KRK RP5 G4/G5, Focal Alpha 50 Evo, Yamaha HS7 and a bunch of others.) For a typical 6.5" like a Kali LP6 V2 I would plan with about 80 cm and up.

The iLoud Micros obviously cannot escape Hoffmann's Iron Law - small speaker, deep bass, loud, pick any two. Their party trick of reaching exceptionally low for the size only works at moderately levels, and the DSP will progressively throttle back the low end when it gets louder, which can apparently sound a bit ugly on music. I will say that I am quite happy with 3" class speakers (EVE SC203) at the office, where volume has to remain fairly modest basically all the time - at least once I addressed some weaknesses in the bass and treble via measurement and EQ.

LP6 V2s probably get you the deepest bass response at this price point, short of going for some kind of 2.1 system. They should have the vast majority of music covered well.

Do budget on some monitor desk stands (or floor stands behind the desk), Thomann has quite a decent selection of inexpensive ones these days. Placing speakers directly on the desk generally gives rather messy results in my experience and is not recommended.

For those monitors with primarily balanced inputs, you can get a decent USB audio interface for around 100€ (maybe a bit more but about 140 tops), particularly since you already had an eye on measurement microphones anyway. Just getting a balanced output in itself can be done far more cheaply if need be... I'm running my onboard audio through a Behringer HD400 and that also works. (The microphone department is served by a Mackie 402 VLZ4 mixer that I bought used pre-pandemic for <50€. With the Asus Xonar D1 soundcard in my old computer used for recording, I reckoned this probably beat a number of interfaces at close to double the price in 2018 (assuming about a 20€ used priced for the D1). I have bought a super-cheap audio interface or two, and oh boy are there some real stinkers out there. Now my current onboard ALC1200 is a bit of a step down from the trusty Xonar, but my janky setup still fares pretty alright I'd say.)

 

[ZolaIII]

@AnalogSteph in some markets for a price of about 220 US$ each you can even get JBL 308P Mk II. If it's desktop audio cards like Creative Z SE (fine up to 1.8 V) or AE-5 (5 plus) cost 100/140$ and you get 6 chenel line out and more or less capable headphone amplifier (ADC is pretty much sub pair as always in case of Creative). Have both, doungraded deliberately to Z SE recently for a Toslink input and as I don't use it for headphones (even it work's fine with those that I use as they aren't meaningfully impacted by amplifier self impedance) and - 1 dB out is perfectly fine even with my Yamaha power amplifier which supports up to 2.2 V inputs which is in most cases far less than that.