[Hantra]

All:

How can you tell when you have too much speaker for a given room size?  Mine is 12.5 x 14.5 with 8.5 foot ceilings, and I think I may have too much speaker.

What are the telltale signs?  Or is there such a thing as overspeakering a room?

[nathanm]

Please send your speakers to me.  I will give them a happy home. Promise!

[Tyson]

Generally, to me it's a couple of different things to look out for.  In multi-driver designes, you generally have to sit a certain distance from them in order for the drivers to all blend and give a cohesive sound.  If you can't sit far enough away from them, your room is too small.

2nd, bass and placement.  Many times, it is only possible to get good (non-bloated) bass with the speakers quite a bit away from the rear and side walls.  If you don't have room to position the speakers properly, the room is too small.

3rd, some speakers don't play well at low levels, they need to be goosed with a bit of power before the "wake up".  If that's the case, and you are in a small room, you may be having to play them too loud for comfort in order to get the best performance from them.

[markC]

This sounds very close to my experience. About 3yrs. ago my wife had a hen party and in their exuberance melted a tweeter on one of my energy speaks. I got a new tweet and put it in and everything was ok . Then my friend,(who happens to have a degree in electronics engineering), says why not build a pair of speaks that are volume proof. This will not happen again.. we will build a very efficient pair of speaks. Well that we did. I went from the energy's @ about 86db to the home built which were about 99db. No doubt these speaks went way loud, but I became familiar with the phrase "IF IT'S TOO LOUD.. YOUR TOO OLD" real quick. Actually, it took quite a while. The big guys sounded good,  but didn't come to life until things hit about 90 -95 db. They are now resting quietly in my crawl space awaiting a d-jay gig or something similar. I replaced them with a pair of sililoquy 5.3's and I like what I hear. Not nearly the air movement of the big 15" woofs, but a lot smoother.

[Tweak1]

Basically every record, disc... has a just right volume that comes closest to the sound during the actual event- no softer, no louder. Matching the requiset power, speaker and the ear is an art.