Where do you put speakers then?

I thought it might be useful for me and others to get a clear idea of what does what when it comes to speaker positioning.

I have seen lots of methods for setting them up perfectly in the "ideal world" however most of us have domestic issues to contend with.

For example some ideas on the following.

Firing across the room vs down the room how will this typically affect the sound.

Distance from sidewalls and back walls, ratios/effects etc.

Stuff between speakers like TV's, Fireplaces, Furniture.

Toe in, when to use it and what to listen for.

Live and Dead ends.

Asymmetrical room layouts For example sofas by one speaker but not the other and so on. I'm sure that for most of us a dedicated listening room is not an option so perhaps this thread might help a few people out.

That's proabably enough for now! It seems to me that considering the massive differences in sound quality that can be achieved from good speaker positioning a bit of a sticky about this might be a good idea?

 

Depends what the speakers are and what the room's like. In my case, I have them slightly wider than most folk would recommend, and toed in so that at my listening distance I can see the insides of either speakers, roughly speaking, but only just. Speakers are around 10' apart and I sit around 10' away from either speaker. I can't position them as far into the room as they'd like due to WAF reasons, but I have around 12" clearance on the left one and 18" on the right one. So, in essence I'm sitting around 1/3 into the room and the speakers are close to the wall (but not too close - in my experience most speakers don't like it).

 

I have mine pushed as far in to the corners as possible. This gives less phase difference between the direct sound and the rear wall reflections. I use the DEQ2496 to EQ out the added bass. They are toed in to aim at about 3 feet behiond my head. There is a desk between the speakers with a lot of junk on it... Hi-Fi rack to to the right, against the wall just in front of the speaker, but as it is very low the speakers fire over the top of it. Curtain to the right hand side over a window where the first reflection point is and a CD rack and my other chair on the left hand first reflection point. Dead rear wall as I sit very close to it and a relatively live, but diffuse front wall between the speakers. Diffusers on the ceiling first reflection point. My panel bass traps in the front corners behind the speakers, on the ceiling, and broadband absorption in the rear wall corners.

Despite being very close to the side walls, I get very good imaging and soundstage, maybe due to the absorption and diffusion at the first reflection points.

Front ported speakers BTW.

 

7 feet apart, hard up against the wall

 

The thread title is a rhetorical question by the way.

 

I sit about 8-9 foot away from the speakers and they're about 8-9 foot apart and almost 2 foot away from the wall...

 

Anywhere I want!

My latest creation, the "things"

 

This will depend very heavily on the speakers used. Despite being sealed boxes, my ATCs like a lot of breathing room - too close to the rear or side walls and the midband muddies significantly. I've got mine probably about a metre and a half from the rear wall (maybe a bit less) and about the same from the side walls, with a sofa in between them.

They're toed in very slightly, but again this is highly dependant on the speakers. The ATCs in particular don't like to be pointed directly at the listener (as many studio monitors do) as the treble and upper midband is too forward and rough - to get a smooth frequency response and a more even balance, they need to be nearly perpendicular to the rear wall (of course, the angle of toe-in will also depend on the seating position relative to the speakers - and also on personal preference).

It took me a long time to find the best positions for them in my old room, and the improvements wrought by taking that time were immense - much more important than any upstream electronics upgrades. My current room is a fair bit bigger and better behaved, and I had the previous room's experience, so it didn't take me nearly as long to find a good spot for them.

I've got some acoustic foam, but it's not too critical in my current large room - was much more so in the old room.

Dunc

 

Any chance of a DIY write up Paul? It would be very interesting how your Shahinianalikes get on

 

Theres a thread over on PFM. I'll cut and paste it over here when I get a momment, I need all the help I can get!


Paul.

 

Cheers. Julians thread on his speakers was one of the best ever. I'd missed yours on PFM

 

mine are not best place - 12L's on Atacama stands sit only 5ft apart at the most on either side of the fireplace so only 8-10" away from the fireplace / 12" away from the back wall so they are sat ina corner..... domestic situation and also length of current speaker cable prohibit much movement....

......am currently in negotiations with SWMBO ref BASS traps either side of the fireplace which will help. - i think i have more chance of that than Isaacs other suggestion - a pair of PMC GB1's...lovely, i'm sure the PMC's would have very high WAF due to their diminutive build, however merely looking good does not pay the associated CCard bill

on the plus side - vocals do sit bang in the middle so, when the CDP is on, we appear to have a singing multifuel stove.......fortunately that sits right back in the fireplace but i am monitoring the heat reaching the speakers........whilst i have issues with firewood i dont think the 12L's warrant torching just yet...

 

When I first got my current set up running I was having horrendous problems with trying to position my speakers to avoid a mid-upper bass resonance that was horrid.
A nice man from the shop came out, work absolute wonders and made me cry with delight. He didn't touch the speakers until right at the end of his visit. I had put them up against the wall as a sort of 'start off' position and all he had to do was move them slightly. What was far more important was the set-up of the cdp, amp, rack and cables along with the surrounding furnishing. The speaker positioning became just a very 'fine' tuning excercise at the end!
I now have a system that I am ecstatic with.

 

Due to space constraints and where my chair is, mine sit about 1.5 feet apart on my desk - more as 'nearfiels' really. Here they are:



If I had more room/floor space, I'd definately put them on stands.

 

Nsherin, why not move the hi-fi and place the speaker at the other end of the desk to get a wider soundstage?

If you really have to have them that close together and sit that close as well, you might find headphones offer a far better sound for the money. Something like the K1000, although a bit expensive, even has soundstage!

 

Mine are on my own stands, cost me £20 to make, the biggest expense was the threaded metal rod connecting the two drain pipes together.

 

Thanks Tenson - I quite like the sound from the Mission m70s - I use Sony MDR-CD480s for headphone listening and they do the job.

I've got two weeks off now, so will try moving the hifi gear over a bit and see how it sounds.

AT - the stands and rack are looking good - a bargain for the money.

 

Different for different speakers. I find even listening volumes can affect best placement.
If you click the link you will open a .pdf of what ProAc reccomend for their D25's. (3rd page)
http://www.proac-loudspeakers.com/datasheets/D25_review.pdf
I followed this and the results were good.
The proportions also seem to be scaleable. i.e 0.75-0.83 of the distance away as the width apart.
I do find this to be the best toe too.

 

Hi,

The problem is that speakers with different technologies need different placement. For example my current speaker system is arranged with the main speakers which are dipoles as close to the corners as managable, as they excite room modes least in this position, while also making the rear LF output more useful. The sealed subwoofer on the other hand is nearer to the room center where it least excites room modes.

While using conventional main speakers I tended to place them near corners and equalise the room-modes out (Behringer EQ or analogue circuitry) but I have also used the Wilson Audio Setup Procedure (WASP) with good sucess.

As a rule you can say that conventional HiFi Speakers (Cone/Dome 2-Way especially) work best across the long wall and pretty much in the middle of the room, with severe toe-in (Audio Physics style) or in other words conventional speakers tend to reliably sound best wherever they do the most visual and usability damage to the room they are in, one of the reasons I have moved away from such technologies.

Ciao T

 

From Turbosound technical lab:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: What is the correct angle between cabinets in order to get even coverage?

A: A good rule of thumb is to calculate 60% of the nominal horizontal dispersion angle of the cabinet at the -6dB points, and splay adjacent cabinets at that angle (50° x 0.6 = 30°) as your starting point. Then walk across the front of the PA using familiar program material as your music source and listen for peaks and troughs in the frequency response as you move between cabinets. Fine-tune the angle until you achieve the desired result.

Q: How can I calculate the sound pressure level at a known distance from the PA?

A: Sound intensity reduces rapidly in intensity at a distance from the source according to the inverse square law, which predicts that a doubling of distance will result in a reduction of ¼ the original, equal to a drop of 6dB, providing there are no reflections or reverberation. For example, in an open space where the front seats are 6 meters (20 ft) from the sound source and the back seats are 60 m (200 ft) from the sound source, you would expect the sound pressure to drop by a factor of 100 (=20 decibels) between the front seats and the back seats. In a real world auditorium, this reduction is partially mitigated by the effects of reverberation in the distant field, and in the near field because the speaker looks more like a wall source than a point source. However in a real-world situation like an auditorium, this reduction is partially mitigated by the effects of reverberation in the distant field, and in the near field because the speaker looks more like a wall source than a point source. Therefore the sound field in a room only behaves according the inverse square law in relatively narrow distanced range.

Q: What is a virtual point source array?

A: The primary objective of a flown loudspeaker array is to provide all seats in the auditorium with an even and equal sound coverage. The best way of doing this is to position the loudspeaker enclosures in such a way so that no two enclosures point in the same direction. If you draw lines parallel to the way the drivers are pointing, back behind the loudspeaker array, they should intersect at the Virtual Point Source. The effect is like listening to only two sources, one left and one right, which stands a heck of a lot better chance of sounding coherent than a bunch of boxes coming at you from different locations and distances.

Hope this help,
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Nelson Gaspar