600 sq ft room...Satellites or book shelves?? (1 Viewer)

[GaryPete]

My HT room is 600 sq ft but we don't have any speakers, yet. Wife says small speakers and I always do what I'm told. The satellite speakers I've read about so far are recommended for no more than 400 sq ft which is closer to our actual seating area in the big room. I'd still like to do the satellite route but need a recommendation for ones that won't get lost in a larger room or if we need to go with some bigger book shelf units. They will be powered by a Yamaha 5740 through a Sony Wega TV and accompanied by a subwoofer that we haven't got yet, either, but we're leaning toward the Fluance 10". Thanks for any help!

 

[Mike SJ]

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[GaryPete]

All we have so far is the Yamaha and TV as I mentioned plus a Toshiba DVD player, CD player and VCR. I'd say it will be used almost 99% for movies at low to moderate volume levels. We're interested more in the clarity of sound at moderate to lower volumes and not so much how loud we can stand it. At our ages we're happy to be able to hear it at all! I think we'd like to keep the speaker expense down to about $500 if possible. I know that really limits the choices but there must be one or two arrangements that will perform for us. As far as auditioning speakers in person I have yet to walk into an audio store in my area that has a speaker display that they can make work. We've got all the big box electronic retailers here and the poor kids they have selling these things don't seem to have any training at all. I'm not kidding. So here I am begging for the wisdom of those who seem to really know.

 

[Mike SJ]

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[Tom Tubbiola]

What type of room? Is there a crawl space above? Have you considered in-ceiling mounted surrounds? You can wall mount most any bookshelf speaker from the tiny ones (Bose, etc.) to the larger ones (JBL S38s).

If you went with the ceiling mounted surround speakers (no wires showing = high WAF) maybe you could talk her into larger mains up front?

Just a few ideas.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Assuming a 8-foot ceiling, that’s 4800 cubic ft. – a pretty large room to be filling with small speakers. If other rooms open to this room – kitchen dining, etc. – and/or if the ceiling is high, that makes things more demanding, from the aspect of system output.

I think at minimum I’d go with some bookshelf speakers, with at least a 6” woofer. Most speakers with 6-inchers are still fairly small.

Tom’s suggestion that maybe you could use in-walls or in-ceiling for the rears is a good one. Maybe that will buy you some latitude with the front speakers.

I think that sub will be inadequate for the room, even at moderate volumes, unless it puts out a lot for its size. I’d go with at least a 12”. For a top-notch home theater experience, you want to be able to hit 25Hz. 10” subs, unless they are a high-performance, esoteric design (read expensive) just have a hard time hitting the lowest frequencies in a large room.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt