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Subwoofers make all big speakers obsolete?

thewas

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Interesting, and I think it’s the size of the room. In my large room I doubt I would ever get bookshelves to create the soundstage that I have with my floor standers. In my experience large rooms swallow up small speakers.
What I can imagine is that your larger loudspeakers have higher directivity and thus still image at larger listening distances when wider radiating loudspeakers are already at far field conditions.
 

thewas

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This isn’t to say that you can’t get them to sound good, but you’ll never get a set of bookshelf speakers sound as good as my floor standers in my 16’ x 26’ room.

I guess it all depends what you’re after.
Bass and SPL play of course a major role, I am just talking about imaging though and having for example the spl and bass debth the same (for example by using subwoofers).
 

BrokenEnglishGuy

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let's not forget mostly directivity at 100-500hz it's kind of omni, having more driver just create large image

For example
The R3 and R11, the R11 just uses more woofers with the same directivity
 
D

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What I can imagine is that your larger loudspeakers have higher directivity and thus still image at larger listening distances when wider radiating loudspeakers are already at far field conditions.
I would think that you are correct, and something that a bookshelf speaker could never do in my room. Studio monitors may be a different story, like a set of three-way JBL‘s that I have from the 1980s.

Listen there has been talk about floorstanding speakers becoming obsolete 25 + years ago, and yet they remain. If they were dinosaurs, they would be extinct. Point and case… Do you know any bookshelf speakers that can run full range?
 
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Bugal1998

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You'll have to pry my large speakers from my hands lol.

Although I do have studio monitors, I like my large floorstanding speakers of which I have more than a few.

I’ve always found that monitors, or bookshelves could never create the sound stage that a large set of speakers can. Maybe that’s just me, or maybe it’s my room. The large speakers also give me the flexibility to run my two channel set up without subwoofers if I choose. I would never be happy with the bass response produced from a set of bookshelf speakers, Studio monitors like the older JBL‘s maybe.

Also in my AVR I set my large speakers too small when running my subwoofers, and I can turn that off and run them full range if I so choose.

Everybody has different needs, and there probably is no correct answer, but in my opinion large speakers will always have a place in the audio world. I understand if people are happy with a bookshelf for monitor, and all the power to them. Happy is happy.

I feel the same way about my large speakers. I don’t know if the perception of bigger sound would hold-up in a blind listening test (guessing it wouldn’t, see below)… but I don’t listen blind, so visual illusion or not, I like it!

I find it interesting that many people write that their larger loudspeakers create a bigger image while my experience is rather the opposite, usually smaller loudspeakers which come closer to a point source (ideally coaxial or full range) give me the most impressive three dimensional sound stages.

I have experience with smaller speakers EQ’d to the same curve in the same room providing more depth and width to the soundstage than the large speakers (JBL 305p MkII vs JBL M2). But the larger speakers still sounded “bigger” even when the soundstage presentation was slightly smaller. Again, purely visual illusion, or consequence of driver spacing, dynamic output, etc.? I have no idea. But I like it.
 

thewas

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It all depends on the listening distance, room size and max spl. Generally of course floorstanders are louder although if you want a deep and position independent bass also in most cases subwoofers are there necessary too.
 
D

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Bass and SPL play of course a major role, I am just talking about imaging though and having for example the spl and bass debth the same (for example by using subwoofers)
I guess they probably will image as well, i’ve just always found that there’s something lacking coming from a smaller speaker.

I understand if people want to use them, but I’ve heard this argument over 20 years ago, but yet there still remains a market for large floor standing speakers. It’s getting smaller because everybody is going to desktop everything, but the desktop doesn’t interest me, call me old school.
 
D

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It all depends on the listening distance, room size and max spl. Generally of course floorstanders are louder although if you want a deep and position independent bass also in most cases subwoofers are there necessary too.
I agree, although my floors standers effortlessly produce full range sound, and although I have three subwoofers set up nearfield, I don’t need them except for home theater. I do admit to the using them in two channel listening on occasion.
 

thewas

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People have different past experiences, I personally doubt I could clearly differenciate between good floorstanding and bookshelf plus subs systems if having similar directivity and frequency responses in blind listening.
 
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Pearljam5000

Pearljam5000

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I always claimed big speakers just sound bigger and their Soundstage is also bigger
 
D

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People have different past experiences, I personally doubt I could clearly differenciate between good floorstanding and bookshelf plus subs systems if having similar directivity and frequency responses in blind listening.
I agree about people having different experiences. I would have to disagree that you couldn’t tell though, unless you crossed the subwoofer to cut out everything below 40 Hz

The subwoofer is going to produce everything below 40 Hz better than (most) full range speaker. So if it’s crossed over properly maybe you couldn’t, and maybe I couldn’t either.

Always good to learn, thanks for the discussion :)
 

Willem

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I think continuing with the binary distinction may not be very useful. Why not asume that you simply need a larger main speaker with your subs, the larger the room? So apart from their other advantages subs allow you to go one or two sizes down with the main speakers that suit your room, but no more.
 
D

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I always claimed big speakers just sound bigger and their Soundstage is also bigger
Maybe we just listen to music too loudly lol. I guess it’s all what you’re used to, and it’s nice to have the extra headroom of a larger speaker.

I guess that’s one of my theories, headroom in speakers. It’s like driving a high powered car, you never know when you’re going to need the extra boost.

I wonder if that would make them hard to insure? Lol!
 
D

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I think continuing with the binary distinction may not be very useful. Why not asume that you simply need a larger main speaker with your subs, the larger the room? So apart from their other advantages subs allow you to go one or two sizes down with the main speakers that suit your room, but no more.
I will agree with that. So let me backtrack a little bit, there are advantages to bookshelf speakers and subwoofers. But… there will always be a market for a larger speaker. They both have their uses for sure.
 

Crosstalk

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let's not forget mostly directivity at 100-500hz it's kind of omni, having more driver just create large image

For example
The R3 and R11, the R11 just uses more woofers with the same directivity
which is useful if you are planning to keep speakers wide apart and still like to have large body of sound objects in space. Big drivers can be placed wider and can create larger soundstage. R11 definitely had the edge over all other R series when I demoed them. But you dont need it if you dont have a large room.
 

sigbergaudio

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Lots of anecdotal evidence in this thread. A small speaker can definitely sound big, this depends on a number of things. Directivity, even off-axis dispersion, low range capacity (which will require a well integrated sub if the speakers are small), etc.
 

sigbergaudio

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That’s not exactly true, our speakers, their placement and our room has the final say in soundstage. Yes it’s mastered that way, by mic placement, DSP and other Sound quality that the engineering master is after, but just as important are the variables I just stated.

Yes, but perhaps not in the way one would think. The LESS your system interacts with the room, the more of the imaging and spatical cues present in the recording will be conveyed successfully to you as a listener.
 

Willem

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That is probably true, but sadly there is so little musical repertoire. Also, I dread the thought of more speakers in our nice room (two Quad 2805 electrostats plus subs is quite a lot already).
 
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