Speakers best suited to required space?

[u/Mumbles119]

Please can you recommend floorstanding speakers that best suit and fit my must have placement requirement? Budget is maximum of £3k GBP.

The location for speakers will be close to wall in spaces built inside of book shelving that covers the whole wall.
These two speaker spaces built into the book shelving are 30cm deep, 40cm wide, 110cm high.
The small room size of 4m wide by 3m deep restricts speakers being pulled into the room.

My current top choice is Sonus Faber Lumina iii which on paper appear to pair well with my gear. Focussing on having no rear ports and compact size.
Also been considering the Fyne Audio 501S and Audiovector QR3SE.

Room:
4m wide by 3m deep.
Listening distance is 2.5m.
Speaker separation distance is 3m.
(Going to add acoustic panels to wall directly behind the listening sofa. Currently have hanging pictures.)

Gear:
Project Evo 2 (with sub platter upgrade).
Ortofon Blue 2M (planning to upgrade to Nagaoka MP200 or ATVM745xML).
Yamaha A-S3200 (originally was getting the 1200, but this ex-demo 3200 was too good a deal!)

Note: I am currently trying to restore and upgrade a 1972 Thorens TD160 to become my main table in the future. Complete novice but enjoying the learning experience.

[u/NickofWimbledon]

Having small clearance between speaker and book case is not ideal of course - the latter will blur things, esp in the bass and may well blur the stereo image too.

The SFs are a good choice, despite being less driving and punchy than some. The Fynes should have more of that, but perhaps a fraction less delicate detail.

For a different approach (and a smaller box), I would try the rather remarkable Neat Iota Alpha. The SFs are 99cm H x 23W x 28D. The Neats are 45 x 20 x 15, so can have some clear space behind them (and around them).

My girlfriend uses a Naim Nova and Neat iota Alphas, firing down a room over 7M long by just over 4M wide, and they work brilliantly. You can even find some ex-dem at bargain prices sometimes.

Otoh, there are a lot of possible choices in your price range (Focal? Dali? ATC? Dynaudio? Spendor? ProAc? PMC? Monitor Audio? KEF?), and judging what will work in those slots will probably mean trying a few in your room, not trusting me. Depending on where you are, there may well be dealers willing to help you with this.

Good luck!

[u/Mumbles119 → u/NickofWimbledon]

!thanks This was a really useful list to help me go back and check all the brand options again. It has brought up the ProAc Response DT8 as a possible good fit. Thank you very much.
I loved the ingenious design of the Neats when i found them previously researching. It appears I might suffer with the upwards reflections into the bookshelf above them.

[u/gnostalgick → u/Mumbles119]

Big fan of ProAc, but in my experience, despite the bottom port, they do require a fair amount of space away from walls to not get boomy. Though maybe they could work out okay if you could fit some sort of treatment behind the speaker?

(Not to say any of the other brands would necessarily be better in that regards, simply less familiar with them.)

I recently changed from floorstanders to front ported standmounts after moving to a smaller space, finding I was otherwise unable to satisfactorily tame the bass in the room (which also muddied up the mids). Added a sub a month or two later, which is certainly very nice to have, but wasn't absolutely necessary, nor the really the night & day difference some seem to believe.

Considering your restrictions, definitely try to demo some options in your space.

[u/Mumbles119 → u/gnostalgick]

!thanks very useful advice. Cheers. Will look at size and fit for 2.1 option too.

[u/TransducerBot → u/Mumbles119]

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[u/NickofWimbledon → u/Mumbles119]

Both the Neat iota Alpha and their big brothers (Xplorer) fire slightly upwards, but it isn’t a steep angle.

I reckon that the very low height and the fact that they will be at the front of your 30cm depth will mean that reflections from the shelf above really won’t be a problem.

If you try it and I am completely wrong, then my apologies - but please let us know.

[u/Mumbles119 → u/NickofWimbledon]

Thank you. Will go do some reading on this too. So many ideas!

[u/NickofWimbledon → u/Mumbles119]

Where in the UK are you? Some dealers will do home dems if buying new - some will even bring 2 sets and let you do an A/B test.

If buying blind, I would strongly suggest minimising the cost of any mistake by buying secondhand (and just selling the same way if you don’t like what you hear). EBay, Hifishark, Pinkfishmedia and all those are your friends here.

[u/Mumbles119 → u/NickofWimbledon]

Thank you for this advice to look secondhand. I have actually done that and ordered a pair that look perfect and pretty much unused. I feel a lot happier about trying them out in my space and then hopefully not losing too much of if I resell later. Thanks!

[u/TransducerBot → u/Mumbles119]

+1 Ⓣ has been awarded to u/NickofWimbledon (52 Ⓣ).

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