What are your expectations in term of bass rendering ?

Are you seated in the center of the room ?

The disperson of the preferred speaker for a room depends on the degree of reverberation in the room. The usual rule of thumb:

(1) Wide dispersion - room with low reverberation.

(2) Narrow or so-called "Controlled Dispersion" - room with normal or greater reverberation.

Some fairly common speakers (can we say mainstream?) that have controlled dispersion:

Behringer B2030 & B2031

JBL - just about every studio monitor they sell starting with the LSR 305 and working on up.

etc.

I was expecting to recommand passive monitors because of hissing and humming issues (i've sold my active moniors because of this problem) that was totally utterly annoying for me.
Entry level monitors woofers are very, very often boomy and one note sounding.

FWIW, my LSR308s are turned on 24/7 as they are very quiet and use very little power when not playing music.

I am seated slightly off center, though as I said my room arrangement may change after I move.

I have looked at the Behringer B2030 & B2031 and the JBL LSR 305 and they seem quite appealing to me, but given my small room size they are probably not the way to go(?).

I'd definitely want to avoid hissing or humming, especially since a lot of speakers seem to have their controls on the back, meaning I cannot easily switch them off.

This gives me some confidence however (leaving the speakers on 24/7 would be most convenient).

Quote from: sohalt on 2016-11-22 17:25:49

I am seated slightly off center, though as I said my room arrangement may change after I move.

Great ! the room resonances are often occur under 150Hz and exhibit huge spikes and deeps in the frequency response (ringings).

All there resonances are canceled in the center of the room, so you will be less impacted.

The bass rendering in a small room is a big challenge because there is no electronic solutions to cure mechanical issues.

You should perhaps buy proximity monitors and buy a sub after you move.

I have looked at the Behringer B2030 & B2031 and the JBL LSR 305 and they seem quite appealing to me, but given my small room size they are probably not the way to go(?).

These are very, very classical bass reflex tuning... you can expect the legendary BOOOOMMMM at 50Hz

I'd definitely want to avoid hissing or humming, especially since a lot of speakers seem to have their controls on the back, meaning I cannot easily switch them off.

Passive monitors are a better bet for hissing issues and less expensive to repair thanks to the separate amp.

Thanks for the clarifications, but expect a good bass rendering from a 5' woofer and correct rooms modes with equalisation seems highly controversial 

Low mechanical to the air impedance coupling is critical for the bass rendering and ringings will ring whatever you do to with your equalizers, because of the physics.

Quote from: silverprout on 2016-11-23 16:40:34

Thanks for the clarifications, but expect a good bass rendering from a 5' woofer and correct rooms modes with equalisation seems highly controversial 

As long as the goal is something as poorly defined as "Good bass?" the answer is yes, no, and maybe.

Similarly, I've seen alleged subwoofers that were e?, 4", 5", and 6 1/2 inches. The 8 inch woofer in a LSR305 will usually demolish any of them.

Quote

Low mechanical to the air impedance coupling is critical for the bass rendering and ringings will ring whatever you do to with your equalizers, because of the physics.

Whatever that means.  Looks like you've got the business of making meaningless statements  based on audiophile buzzwords down pat,

I define a good bass rendering as going low enough to render what has been recorded on my tracks and with enough "accuracy" to be able differentiate the instruments that sound very similar in the 40-100Hz range (sometimes identical)

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2016-11-24 02:31:27

Similarly, I've seen alleged subwoofers that were e?, 4", 5", and 6 1/2 inches. The 8 inch woofer in a LSR305 will usually demolish any of them.

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Low mechanical to the air impedance coupling is critical for the bass rendering and ringings will ring whatever you do to with your equalizers, because of the physics.

Whatever that means.  Looks like you've got the business of making meaningless statements  based on audiophile buzzwords down pat,

A factoid that utterly destroys the above is that modern speakers are about 1% efficient which means that about 99% of the energy that is delivered to their characteristic impedance is lost due to high mechanical losses due to high series mechanical impedances and low parallel impedance's (you didn't distinguish between the two which makes your statement largely irrelevant not to mention self-contradictory).

The electrical energy converted by the motor (the coil and magentic field) in mecanical energy, then that mecanical energy is transfered to the membrane and the membrane transferts its mecanical energy to the air.

Then transfer of the mechanical energy of the cone to the air is depending of the surface of the contact with the air and the quantity of air that this surface is able to displace.

The impedance that I was talking about was in the transfer of the mechanical energy to the air...

to be simple the more the membrane is large (and able to displace a large volume of air) the more it is difficult to move it... the higher is your impedance in this POV.

The best I can see is that some kind of clean response down to 40 Hz will satisfy you.  The LSR 308's are the only ones on my list that have adequate dynamic range that low, with the B2032s coming in a close second. it should be possible to avoid the complexity and cost of a subwoofer which would be need to be a good one or two, a good 8: or larger,

40 Hz might be OK for casual listening or soft rock, but common musical instruments have satisfying output down to 32 Hz, and some classical music can be well-served by clean linear response down to 20 Hz or less.

A factoid that utterly destroys the above is that modern speakers are about 1% efficient which means that about 99% of the energy that is delivered to their characteristic impedance is lost due to high mechanical losses due to high series mechanical impedances and low parallel impedance's (you didn't distinguish between the two which makes your statement largely irrelevant not to mention self-contradictory).

I see why you are so hell bent against vented enclosures, because they don't solely work that way.  In fact modern speakers manage to have good performance even as the size of their surface contact with the air varies over a wide range. This is to say that other issues are far more important.

As I already pointed out there are both parallel and series impedances that are involved. While that is obviously going on in the background, anybody who actually designs working speakers will tell you that their projects run from start to finish with no direct consideration of it.

Ignores the rather obvious fact that air volume displacement is not solely dependent on the size of the membrane, but rather the linear stroke of the membrane is equally important Furthermore air volume displacement is only an issue at the lowest frequencies.  Obviously midranges and tweeters, and even woofers in their higher frequencies work very well without displacing much air.

The shape of the membrane would also have influence, no ?

Quote from: silverprout on 2016-11-24 20:47:03

The shape of the membrane would also have influence, no ?

Very little actually.

Quote from: Ed Seedhouse on 2016-11-24 21:41:55

Quote from: silverprout on 2016-11-24 20:47:03

The shape of the membrane would also have influence, no ?

Very little actually.

The emissive surface of a flat membrane is vastly inferior to a deep cone, everyone should understand it easly.

I was here to inform the autor of this topic that a small bass reflex monitor as the JBL LSR305 (slogan : hear the truth ) is a small bass reflex loudspeaker wit a very sharp roll off in the bass and is designed to match the "Harman listener preference curve" which is gentle downward slope 10 dB across the spectrum, 1dB/octave.

You can call it warm, dark or boomy if the rolloff is too sharp. thanks for reading 

Quote from: Ed Seedhouse on 2016-11-24 21:41:55

Quote from: silverprout on 2016-11-24 20:47:03

The shape of the membrane would also have influence, no ?

Very little actually.

The emissive surface of a flat membrane is vastly inferior to a deep cone, everyone shoud understand it easly.

Needless to say, many highly credentialed audio professionals and even just plain regular audiophiles such as myself disagree.

For one thing the bass roll off of an  speaker in the bass range is highly dependent on the space it is in and its position in that space.  Therefore it can't be characterized just one way as our correspondent, identified by only a hidden alias, ignorantly asserts.

If one wants smooth, well-balanced bass,  careful placement, electronic equalization and addition or one or more subwoofers, if intellgently executed can be a great help. For example my LSR 308 based system has two independently equalized 12" subwoofers and the 308's themselves are also electronically equalized.

Just as everyone will understand that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, as proven by Aristotle.
Unfortunately no one actually bothered to check this out until Galileo.
But the effect of driver shape on various sound qualities has, unfortunately for you, been checked many times and I'm afraid reality disagrees with you.    Actually acoustic theory does as well, but that's only because the theory is based on actual evidence.
But I would be surprised if that changes your mind.

...and proper objective testing methodology, though this isn't an isolated problem.

Quote from: Ed Seedhouse on 2016-11-25 19:35:49

Needless to say, many highly credentialed audio professionals and even just plain regular audiophiles such as myself disagree.

For one thing the bass roll off of an  speaker in the bass range is highly dependent on the space it is in and its position in that space.  Therefore it can't be characterized just one way as our correspondent, identified by only a hidden alias, ignorantly asserts.

If one wants smooth, well-balanced bass,  careful placement, electronic equalization and addition or one or more subwoofers, if intellgently executed can be a great help. For example my LSR 308 based system has two independently equalized 12" subwoofers and the 308's themselves are also electronically equalized.

The problem that i see, is how to ripp out the woofers out of the boxes to place them idealy in my room.

Quote from: greynol on 2016-11-26 04:43:51

...and proper objective testing methodology, though this isn't an isolated problem.

Since all our technology is vastly unperfect there is always a intuitive small part in all methodologies and approach to the measurements.
It should be interesting to explore gated, ungated frequency responses and CSD graphs to caracterize my room and understand or reorient my choices but :
I was here to help sohalt in his quest of a good sound in a small room, as i've said it before choosing small pricey BR professionnal monitors is not a great resommandation if your room is canceling everything under 150Hz and highly reverberant.
Sometimes a small inexpensive 2.1 setup with an intelligently located sub perform a lot better.

Thank you for your discussion.
I sadly didn't find the time to reply during the week, and don't have to much time now either, so I'll make this short:
After reading your posts I got the impression that going with the Behringer B2031 or JBL LSR305 or LSR308 might not be a bad idea after all, even with my small room size. A pair of any one of them would cost me between ~300 and 450€, so I'd still have more than enough budget left to buy a pre-amp and a subwoofer.
I'm thinking about first getting only the pair of near-field monitors to see whether their bass is sufficient for me and, if not, later getting a subwoofer in addition.

I got the impression that going with the Behringer B2031 or JBL LSR305 or LSR308 might not be a bad idea after all, even with my small room size.

You should perhaps choose the smallest ones if you buy a subwoofer after, they should be easier to place.
And don't forget to toe them in and place them away from the rear wall (the BR port is on the back)

Beware of technically illiterate "advice" that plagues many fora.

Quote from: sohalt on 2016-11-27 23:48:54

I got the impression that going with the Behringer B2031 or JBL LSR305 or LSR308 might not be a bad idea after all, even with my small room size.

Contrary to audio folklore, bigger speakers are better in smaller rooms. While their deeper bass extension can excite lower modes than smaller speakers, their larger size gives them the advantage of being more directional over a wider bandwidth. Unlike LF modes, this is not correctable, via DSP or otherwise. That means they tend to be easier placed within the room while yielding acceptable spatial rendering given proximity to boundaries. The issues of peaks in the bass region, after optimized placement can be addressed via EQ.
It is better to have 2 sources exciting those bass modes than one, as has been suggested. The B2031, 308 and other similar active monitors have further benefits such as on board shelving and high pass filters, again making them easier to deal with bass/[placement issues.

Quote from: silverprout on 2016-11-29 09:59:38

You should perhaps choose the smallest ones if you buy a subwoofer after, they should be easier to place.
And don't forget to toe them in and place them away from the rear wall (the BR port is on the back)

Unless the speaker is so large that driver blending suffers, there is a general tendency for larger speakers to sound better and smaller speakers to sound worse.
Small speakers inherently lack directivity control which means that they allow more of the room to degrade speaker sound quality.
In the group of speakers we're discussing, none of them are what I'd call  really large. For example the LSR 308 has 16.5 inches as its largest dimension. I'd p[ck the larger of the ones suggested every day of the week, all day long.
For example, the geneally small size of Bose speakers contributes to their lack of sound quality.
Also remember the LSR 305 and 308s are based on constant directivity horns, so the rule of thumb is that they will have the about same frequency response and therefore the same tone over a relatively wide frontal angle. As long as you can see the tweeter diaphragm from your listening location, things are going to be pretty good.

If we look at a frequency graph, the big hole is not so big anymore. Here you can see the measurements from "Sound&Recording" magazine. While it does not looks as good as the Neumann KH120 or Genelec 8351, the reviewer stated that the directivity of the LSR305/308 is amongst the best.