I can only share my experience with my old room in my last house. It was 12.5 feet by 25 feet, but half of one wall was open and also had a half height wall pass through to the kitchen area. My couch was along one long wall, and my Beolab 8000s on the other long wall tha had the kitchen door/pass thru on it, looking at it from the couch the Beolabs were in the left half wall, the pass thru on the other half of the wall.

This room was horribly problematic in bass. Not only did it have a huge standing wave bass boost, it also seemed as if the long wall the couch was on (flexible house construction, not an expensively built house alas) tended to smear the bass, like it resonated and decayed more slowly than the bass note, smearing it into a longer boom, not just a level issue but a time domain stretching. Instead of Boom, it became Booooooooom.

I practically pulled my hair out trying different speakers. This room made the small Magneplanars of the time sound like disco monitors. The Beolab 8000s worked famously there. The bass boost made them have in room response down to about 40 hz. Not at a huge level, only so much two 4 inch woofers per speaker can do, but I could hear notes down there, and they sounded wonderful in that room. The imaging and depth they created were almost as good as planar speakers could do. I was very impressed and happy with my purchase.

Oddly enough, I have them in my new house, in a huge kitchen/sunroom/dining room area, about 4 feet from the dining table, and they sound full and wonderful. When I had them in my new huge living room they sounded lost, which is why I have Beolab 9s in there now, but in the dining area they sound great.

Hope this helps.

Hello Jeff,

Thanks for your reply.

I am a bit confused about your story. You said Beolab 8000 was bad in your 12.5 feet by 25 feet.

And you tried different speakers, and then small Magneplanars of the time sounds good and Beolab 8000 works too ? in which room?

As I understand correctly, now in your new house, you have Beolab 9 in the living room and Beolab 8000 in your dining area?

Do you think Beolab speakers are affected by room acoustics like conventional Hifi speakers? or you have to find the good spot in the room for them?

If so, I am a bit afraid that it takes time to adjust the position of Beolab 8000 in my living room. And I will be disappointed at the end and sell them.

No, the Beolab 8000s were excellent in the old living room with the huge bass hump, the Magnapans were awful, which is surprising as they are not considered to be bass heavy. In fact, every other speaker I tried in the old living room, my old DCM Time Windows, NHT 2.3's, were awful due to the bass hump. I suspect the 8000s worked because they don't have a lot of deep bass to start with, so the hump kind of brought them up to a more reasonable level of bass, it kind of compensated for the lack of bass in the 8000s. They list response, in the specs, down to about 50 hz, I found my bass heavy room let them get down to about 40 hz.

Beolabs are affected by room acoustics just as much as other speakers. Some Beolabs have a switch to select where you position them that alters low end response accordingly. Wall, corner, and free standing. Generally that works but in some rooms you can say, select corner which cuts the bass if the speaker is too bass heavy in the room you have. My huge room is a tad bass shy now, so I set my Lab 9s to free standing even though they are close to a wall, seems to work well.

Your fears about the 8000s and your room will be the same no matter what speaker you buy, you won't know how it sounds in your room until you try it. When I bought my 8000s the dealer gave me a pair to try in my room for a week to see if they worked. Unfortunately that's a rare thing, and harder to get when you buy used.

As with any speaker, proper positioning is important, and every room is different. A lot of people think the 8000s are not great but in my rooms, both the old living room and here in the dining area, they sound wonderful.

Now I see what you mean!

You are definitely correct about the opinion regarding one will never know how it sounds in the room until one tries it.

I am planning to buy used so it is hard to test before buying.

I have Hegel Röst and Dynaudio Excite x34 now but it does not shock me due to the bass issue or standing wave.

I am checking Beolab 8000 or Beolab 17

And other active speaker options with Wall, corner, and free standing settings for example Dynaudio XEO 6.

Well, the Dynaudio speakers are very good, in a good room they are probably more than a little superior to the Beolab 8000s, or the 17s, as much as I love B&O I realize that there are indeed superior speakers out there.

But, if the room interaction is not good, no matter how good the midrange and tweeters are (and I do love Dynaudio tweeters, having used them in numerous designs of mine, a superlative tweeter), the speaker won't be pleasing.

Square rooms are always problems. Problem is, it's damned hard to control the standing waves. You get peaks and suckouts. Peaks you can sometimes tame with a parametric equalizer, where you can control not only the center frequency of the equalizer slider, but also the Q, or width, of the cut or boost. This works well for cutting a peak, but it's impossible to fill in a dip or suckout due to the waves cancelling out. If you boost that frequency, it just boosts the cutout, the cancellation will still be there, no effect.

Have you considered various things like Tube Traps and other bass control room treatments? Tried perhaps arranging the speakers asymmetrically? Even arrange your listening position not aligned with the walls, say one speaker on one wall and another on the adjacent wall with your listening chair angled in the room?

Tough problem, bad rooms can be terrible. I personally love the hard surfaced, no carpet, highly minimalist modernist look, but also know that is horrible for music systems, tends to be bright and echo prone. So, I have a large carpet on the wood floors in my listening room, and a wall hanging that helps disperse any ill effects from the general minimalist furnishings I have.

I knew a person who solved a problem similar to yours by going to subwoofers added to his full range speakers, as strange as that sounds. He put his main speakers where they needed to be for his listening position and to sound best for the midrange and treble, and crossed them over to two subwoofers. He place the subs in different locations in the room, not symmetrical, so as to drive the room modes in different ways by each subwoofer, evening out the bass standing waves that way. I seem to recall the final arrangement was one sub towards the corner to the left of the left main speaker, and the other in about the middle of the wall behind his listening couch. Seemed to work. But that can get complicated and takes a lot of trial and error and measurement. If you don't have a good spl meter and test hardware/signal generators and such it can be hard to do by ear, but possible. Time consuming but possible.

I wish you luck with it, not having a good sounding stereo is awful!