Moving To Bigger Room – Should I Get Tower Speakers?

You know there are numbers and equations out there that will tell you the size of speakers you should get for your new, larger room. But that requires a lot of work you don’t want to do. Even if you did the math, you wouldn’t be confident in your answers. Is there a workaround? Is there a way to know if you should get bigger (tower) speakers because you are moving to a bigger room? Yes! Let’s talk about it!

The Main Concern

The main concern when moving your system to a new, larger room is volume. Your larger room will have a larger volume of air. This will make it harder for your speakers to produce enough bass to seamlessly crossover the speakers into your subwoofers. The internal volume of the speaker (the size) will often dictate how many drivers are present and how loud a speaker can get. If your new room requires you to place your speakers far away from you, then they won’t get loud enough to hit reference level. If you take your old, smaller speakers into this new, larger room, you are afraid they might break if you try to turn them up to your normal volume. Getting tower speakers would prevent all these potential problems instead of trying to move your old speakers to this bigger room.

It’s Hard to Break Stuff

Before we go on to our suggestions on what to do, let’s talk about breaking speakers (and AV receivers). People are often concerned that speakers and receivers are much more fragile than they actually are. Can you turn the volume up so high that your AV receiver breaks? Yes. Can you crank the volume so far above reference level that you damage your speakers? Absolutely. But it isn’t as easy as you think. More importantly, it most often isn’t instantaneous. Your speakers and receiver will start to distort and sound weird long before anything gets close to breaking. As long as you are careful, you are very unlikely to break your receiver or your speakers.

Try It Out

You are correct that there are lots of ways to figure out if your current speakers are too small. Trying it out, in our opinion, is still the best. There are a lot of reasons for this. First, “too small” really means “can’t play loud enough.” The problem with that second part is that “loud enough” isn’t defined. For some people, it is hitting reference level. For most, it is “loud enough for me.” Only you know when you get to your preferred volume level. Your current speakers might not be able to hit reference level in your new room, but they may get loud enough for how you like to experience your system. If you try out your old speakers in your new space and they are clearly having issues, then it is time to start shopping. Not before.

Towe Speakers Don’t Necessarily Solve the Problem

Preemptively buying tower speakers because you are moving to a new room doesn’t really solve your problem. People assume that tower speakers can play louder than bookshelf speakers. In general, this is correct. But not all tower speakers play louder than all bookshelf speakers. On top of that, you are now stuck in the same situation. Now, instead of asking if your current speakers will get loud enough, you must ask if your new tower speakers will get loud enough. How can you know? You put them in the room and try them out!

Think Before You Buy

Lastly, we are going to recommend that you think very carefully about whether or not you really want tower speakers at all. Yes, you are moving to a bigger room and it seems like you’ll have all the space you’ll need for tower speakers. But a space that looks cavernous when it is empty quickly fills up once you start decorating. Bookshelf speakers can get very loud. They are easier to place and more flexible in where you put them. If your current speakers aren’t getting loud enough for your space, the answer might not be tower speakers but more capable bookshelf speakers.

Anyway, the real problem with large rooms isn’t the size of your speakers. It’s the size of your subwoofers. When you realize how much floorspace you’ll need for your subs, you’ll be glad you stuck with smaller, more capable, bookshelf speakers.