Are room acoustics better on smaller speakers?

[denzel200219]

Hello, im new. Smaller speakers dont have as low of bass as larger speakers. Is it easier to treat a room with smaller speakers because you dont have to deal with the low bass?

 

[Purité Audio]

Yes, although if the room is quite small you might still excite the room.
Keith

 

[alex-z]

Being pedantic, speaker size does not have a direct correlation with bass extension. Many home theatre or pro audio speakers are built to maximize efficiency and only target an 80Hz crossover point.

Not exciting room modes certainly makes treating them unnecessary. Practically speaking however I would never recommend deliberately sacrificing bass extension, the detriment to musical enjoyment is substantial. If you have boomy/loose bass you often only need 2-3 bands of PEQ to make it sound substantially better.

 

[denzel200219]

Ah I see, thank you for the info guys. I will do some acoustic treatment then

 

[Keith_W]

Hello, and welcome to ASR. As always there are two factors at play here:

1. How low the speakers will go.
2. What room the speakers are in.

Both are unknowns at this point because you haven't told us. If your speakers don't produce low bass, then there is no need to deal with bass issues. It is as simple as that. But it's a bit like saying that if your car has no tyres, then you don't have to deal with the price of gas.

 

[AdVis]

You might want to look into dipole designs. It may be a bit more difficult to place them because you do need "room" around and behind them, but they do make a big difference in combating room modes.

 

[sigbergaudio]

Relatively few speakers have so little bass that they aren't affected by room problems in the low frequencies.

 

[DVDdoug]

"Regular" acoustic treatment doesn't do much for the bass. It can absorb other frequencies and make the bass stand-out more. You can get bass traps to reduce the reflected bass and that smooths-out the bumps and the dips.

But if you feel like you're hearing too much "room" (like if you have mostly hard surfaces) you may still benefit from "regular" acoustic treatment.

"Diagnosis before treatment." A measurement mic is about $100 USD and REW is FREE.

A lot of people doing audio production in small home studios use small monitors and just ignore the bass, but IMO that's not the best solution.

If you're listening for enjoyment, of course it's up to you if you prefer no-bass to bad-bass.

 

[MRC01]

Room treatment has a lot to do with bass, but it's not only about the bass. I find most home audio rooms to be too reflective for my taste, and some strategically located absorption and dispersion in the mids makes it sound better.
Of course that is in addition to treating bass modes with tube traps, bass traps, and resonators.

 

[dshreter]

As others have said, room treatment is easier if you don't have to deal with managing low bass. That said, room treatment is still completely relevant to small speakers, they don't reduce the usefulness of treatment.

 

[RayDunzl]

I have big and little speakers in this room.

As far as the room is concerned, I think they both exhibit the same general set of problems, mostly down low.

No EQ

The little ones (wide dispersion vs narrow) interact with the walls and ceiling much more, causing this "hash" on an unsmoothed response.

My general opinion would be that big and small speakers of the same type would exhibit the same room faults within their common frequency range range.