Bookshelf or floorstanding speakers is better for a small medium room?

Bookshelf or floorstanding speakers is better for a small medium room?

Buying a new set of speakers is one of the most fun things you can do when you are a music lover. Actually, even if you are into movies or gaming, getting a nice set of new speakers is really cool. In an ideal world, we would all be able to get the most awesome looking, most powerful and most gorgeous looking speakers.

Most of us though are limited not just by our budget, but also the size of the room we have to play with. Many people overlook this fact when they are buying speakers. The size of your room should always come into consideration when you are buying a new set of speakers and today we are asking the question, Bookshelf or floor standing speakers is better for a small-medium room?

Best Speakers For Medium Sized Room

I thought we would look at a more medium sized room to start with. I have always been a fan of floor standing speakers. Not just because of sound quality, but because of the way they look. I love music, but I am also a pretty visual kind of guy so having a showcase set of speakers is something that I like.

In my research and in my experience I must say that I have not come to a definitive answer in regards to what is best for a medium sized room. I do think that a set of bookshelf speakers like the X 18 Speakers from Dyno Audio would be great in a medium-sized room. However, when you look at various forum sites it is like no one can agree. A medium sized room is much harder to say for certain what size speakers you need.

If you have the space to go for a really kick butt set of floor standing speakers I would always recommend you do that. However, if you have the right setup and budget, you can get a set of bookshelf speakers that can really deliver some impressive sound.

Best Speakers For Small Room

For a smaller sized room, there are some great sites out there like the Steve Hoffman Music Forums which debate this topic in a fun way. For me personally, I think that for a smaller room, the size of the speakers is really something you want to look into. You only have so much space so you want to get as much out of it as possible. Having a massive set of speakers taking up a large chunk of your real estate is not ideal.

So what I would do if you have a smaller sized room is actually look for bookshelf speakers. This way you can have them up on the wall out of the way or you can even have them actually sitting on a shelf. You may be worried about power when it comes to bookshelf speakers, but you can actually get some pretty high-end bookshelf speakers these days.

Also as you will see if you do your own research online, your speakers alone will not determine your sound. You need to also look at your subwoofer, receiver and so on to make sure you are getting the best sound possible.

Big Speakers Small Room

Yes the way I wrote that sounded like Yoda, however, this is a problem I actually had many years back when I lived in an apartment. Sometimes you are limited by what you have and when I moved out of my parent’s place and into a place of my own. My “music room” was much smaller than my bedroom. Yet I had these big black Sony speakers. These things were massive and they sounded like a million bucks. They were far too powerful for the room I had them in…. but all was not lost.

At this time these were the speakers I had, this was the space I had and I did not have the money to get new speakers. If you look at other review sites like CNet there is actually some information about how speakers can be too big (or even too small) for a room. The way that I got around having to use big speakers in a small room was by getting the sound just right. This took quite a bit of trial and error and admittedly I was not using the speakers at their full power, but the sound was good.

So if you are stuck with a set of large speakers and a small space. As long as you can fit them in the room, play around with the sound and see if you can get it just the way you want.

Matching Speakers To Room Size

I wanted to share with you guys this video above that gets technical in regards to matching your speakers to your room size. I actually found this very fascinating and it is from the folks at Acoustic Fields and the guy doing the interview certainly knows his stuff. The speaker height should not be more than half of the ceiling site is the basic rule that he gives and this is something that I have come to agree with over the years.

So if you do not want to get super technical like this gentleman is here. One thing that I would advise that you do if you are dead set on getting a set of floor standing speakers is to measure the height of your ceiling. Then look at the height of the speakers you want and make sure they are not over half the height of your ceiling. This is a good basic place to start when looking for a set of speakers.

I hope that this has given you a little more food for thought when it comes to what kind of speakers are better for your small or medium sized room. I know that it is so tempting to just go and buy the largest speakers you can afford, but these are not always the best and they are certainly not always the best if you have a small room.

I would greatly advise that when you are looking for your new speakers that as well as the speakers, take a look at your room and figure out where exactly they are going to go. You are actually better off looking at your room before you even start thinking about the speakers you want. This will help you narrow down what is best for your own personal setup

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