Would it be safe to say that a room with bigger louder lower speakers would need more acoustical treatment?
Not automatically and necessarily, I don't think. A couple of points:
- The acoustic properties of a room, left to their own devices, do not change because the loudspeaker changes. It response characteristics will remain exactly the same (save any tiny differences because of the amount of surface area taken up by the size of the speaker cabinets themselves.) The bass nodes at each frequency will remain in the exact same locations and will crest and trough by the exact same amount, regardless of the speaker installed.
- Considering a room of approximately 10ft in length or width equals one full wavelength at about 112Hz, a room that size without treatment is going to have problems with nodeing and bass development across over more than half of bass frequencies, well into the limited range of even smaller speaker elements like 5" or 6" woof woofs. Might as well get a speaker you like the sound of, since you're going to need treatment anyway.
- Lowering the frequency response does not necessarily mean adding a whole lot more treatment so much as; it means making sure your treatment, in the form of bass trapping, remains an efficient trap at those lower frequencies.
- Woofer size is not a direct indicator of bass response anyway. I've heard 9" woofs that put out lower and sharper bass than some 12" models (I've used both sized for mixing and monitoring in the past) as well as some 6"ers that performed better than some 10"ers. There's way too much involved in loudspeaker design to be able to draw a flat line between woofer size and bass response, let alone woofer size and room size.
G.
