Small dedicated listening rooms


Potentially downsizing from a 17’ x 22’ room to a 8’6 x 10’ room.
Currently have huge three-way floor standers that would swallow the room.
Mostly ARC equipment.
Thoughts on speakers with a smaller footprint that don’t have to be too far off the walls?
Budget of 15k max. Used is fine.



luckytiger1
Boy, that is like a closet. I am not sure you can get good sound in that small room. Certainly no low bass, imaging might be poor, no depth and marginal width. I wouldn't do it.
That's very small...but depending on the ceiling height and a few other factors, it can indeed be made to work. I would suggest a stand mount speaker for a room of this size. Along with a small sub--like the REL T0 or similar. Look at my system thread to see how I have managed with a similar size room. 

In my opinion there are two main acoustic challenges presented by small rooms, and these are really the same issue just different parts of the spectrum.

Most obvious is the increased boundary reinforcement in the bass region. This can be addressed by tailoring the output in the bass region to take this boundary reinforcement into account.

The other main issue is the over-abundance of early reflections. I subscribe to the school of thought that says early reflections tend to degrade clarity. One solution is to use fairly directional speakers and deliberately position and aim them to maximize the time delay between the first-arrival sound and the onset of reflections.

For instance, your Hornscalas have good directional control. If you set them up along the 10-foot wall, not too far apart, and toe them in at 45 degrees (such that their axes criss-cross a foot or two in front of you), the first sidewall reflection of the left-hand speaker would be the long bounce off the right-hand sidewall, and vice versa. You’d be sitting pretty close to the back wall so you’d want aggressive absorption on that wall behind your head. You might want to give your Hornscalas a try with this configuration before investing in anything else, to test out this theory if nothing else.

Other issues that a small room tends to have include lumpy bass in the modal region and constrained soundstage size. I think those issues can be mitigated as well through some rather unorthodox techniques. A distributed multi-sub system is very effective at smoothing the bass in the modal region (and smooth bass = "fast" bass), and deliberately adding a little bit of late-onset reverberant energy can reduce the "small room signature" that is superimposed on top of the acoustics on the recording. Let me explain:

The ear/brain system judges the room size by the time lapse between the first-arrival sound and the "center of gravity" of the reflections. By adding some relatively late-onset reflections, we can push that "center of gravity" a bit and make the room sound bigger than it really is.

Feel free to ask questions about any of this, as most of it is rather counter-intuitive.

Best of luck with your quest.

Duke

My thought is that you need to listen in the near field. You mitigate many of the challenges and sacrifice very little.  It is easy to set up, imaging can be stunning and the level of impact and immediacy is thrilling. 

However, understand Duke really knows what he is talking about and what he is suggesting is likely the best option especially given your significant budget.