Sub-optimal room placement. What price point becomes overkill?

[guermantesbis]

My old large 80s Technics speakers (8 mm bass driver, 60 cm tall) are dying and I will have to replace them. The new speakers will go into a small room sized 3x5 meters (3 meters to ceiling). However, the problem is that room furniture dictates I cannot place them on stands and they will end up pretty crammed into the corners on top of other furniture (10-15 cm space to walls on the side and behind) along one of the 3 meter walls. So far from optimally placed. Should this constraint influence the price point? Do I risk paying for overkill performance at some stage?

Another factor is that I love music (classical (opera as well as chamber), jazz, electronic) and decent sound is important to me. I don't aspire to audiophile quality (as is evident from my amp), but I am automatically looking above the budget segment.

Without having listened to any yet, I am tempted by models such as Monitor Audio 50/100 Bronze/Silver or Focal Chora 806.

I have been playing with the idea of mounting the new speakers on the wall, that way I could at least make sure they are at the same height.

My amp is a Cambridge Audio Azur 550A rated at 2x60W.

Am I looking at decent candidates given the constraints of room size and placement or should I aim lower?
Or Would aiming higher still yield a better sound experience given the constraints?

I'd be grateful for any thoughts on this matter.

 

[Keith_W]

Welcome to ASR!

Are you going to mount the speakers in the corners of the 3m wall? This is what will happen if you do that - (1) you get a megaphone effect that will emphasize the lower frequencies. This may/may not be beneficial and it all depends on how much bass extension your speakers have. (2) it will produce a lot of early reflections that will ruin the stereo image. Mounting them on the 5m wall might be better, but it would still produce early reflections from the wall behind you. If I had such a room, I would choose a speaker with narrow directivity and it would need some form of DSP to deal with room issues.

None of us know how many imperfections you are prepared to live with. I mean, many people don't care about stereo image ... particularly if you listen to instruments like violin solos, piano, or pipe organ where stereo image doesn't matter as much. You may/may not care about full range sound from 20Hz - 20kHz. I am a classical listener as well, and for a very long time all I cared about was whether it could get loud enough and clear enough. In fact that is all I still mostly care about. Neither do we know whether you are prepared to use DSP to deal with your room flaws and how far you are prepared to go to obtain the sound that you want.

I recommend that you set a goal. I think that for a situation like yours, a goal like "I am prepared to give up stereo imaging and low bass reproduction. I want a clear sound which can go loud enough with as few annoying flaws like distortion or frequency peaks as possible" would be a good start and realistic for your situation. I wholeheartedly agree with the wall mount idea.