Speaker Placement Strategies?

[geekwithfamily]

What's the last physical speaker move you made? What made you make the move? New equipment, new REW measurements? Who's placement technique do you follow: Cardas golden rule, manufacturer instructions, High End Audio books, combinations of the former, own home brew technique, divining, voodoo or CAD software?

Do you optimize placement for frequency response or imaging?

I moved my two front speakers further from the side walls to get a little breathing room for my acoustic panel placement. I followed Vandersteen's instructions by dividing the room dimensions by odd numbers and making sure the space from the front and side walls differed by at least 2 inches.

When I was running through my REW measurements for my sub I discovered that shoving the sub as far into its corner as it would go improved bass response over a depressed range (can't remember, maybe 40–60 Hz).

[terry j]

Mr Kyle

good to speak with you again.

I have a tri-amped system, originally running the Behringer DCX 2496 ( loudspeaker xover with limited parametric capabilities).

Thru much trial and error, mainly trying to get the balance between bass response and boominess right, I settled on them at least 2 meters from the wall. That's OK as I have quite a large , dedicated listening room. As it turned out later, by measuring them, they had been put basically in a golden ratio between the back and side walls!! ( not exact, but within 10 % )

The position gives me good imaging, but as I say was mainly to tame the bass.

I have since learnt REW, and have replaced the Behringer with the DEQX. As I had learnt an awful lot re REW and measurement etc, and had the capabilities with the DEQX to actually CORRECT the bass as opposed to moving it to where I could live with it, it enabled me to move my speakers back towards the wall ( keeping the ratios the same) and hence giving me a much larger soundstage, whilst retaining the imaging and having the bass under control. They are now about a meter off the wall

Further to the placement of the speakers above, in addition to them being in the golden ratio between the walls, they and the seat are in an equilateral triangle relationship ha ha, which of course is another of the recommended positionings. Looks like I lucked out on a couple of them simultaneously!

For a couple of months I had the seat a bit inward of the position of equilateral triangle, I find this increases the imaging of the vocals, but at the expense of bigger sound. I only mention this as I recently heard someone else's system. He had optimised it for extreme vocal presentation, and I noticed his listening position was also a 'flattened' equilateral triangle. Not sure how far we can push that, but would be interested to see if that is some sort of useful rule of thumb, has anyone else noticed that relationship???

Traditionally, I have always had my speakers facing exactly at me, and for the sake of experiment mucked about with toe-out from that position. I was stunned!! The sound stage got so much larger and clearer. Talk about an inexpensive tweak.

My frequency response is taken care of by the DEQX, but I'm not exactly sure what you meant by it?? Maybe it was how I did it first, ie optimized for the bass FR?

Anyway, am very happy with the setup as it is, I have everything that is important to me, a physically large setup, excellent imaging and flat controlled bass. After getting used to the new speaker toe in ( they converge behind me now ) I may tinker with further changes to see how that goes, but can't see any substantial differences being made.

[Hakka]

I currently have mine set up for freq response, had some nasty mid bass humps when testing with REW so I positioned the speakers accordingly. When I finished I realised I had the Denon in direct mode - which does not use bass management (I usually crossover at 80hz) so the humps weren't really an issue. I ended up leaving the speakers where they were and never got around to tying to improve imaging.

I've never seen that Cardas site before, I'm gonna have a play around with their placement calculators and see how it goes.

Hakka.

[Hakka]

Well I gave the Cardas calculator a go, have a look where it said to put my speakers.

I didn't do any measuring with REW, just listened to a few CDs, sounded ok but couldn't really pick any improvement over the original speaker positions.

Those positions obviously don't work in my room, I'm curious how to calculate the 'next best' position with regards to the bass response.

One thing I read on the Cardas site that I found interesting was the tip about keeping the humidity above 40% to improve sound quality. Never heard that before.


Harry.

[jackfish]

When using the Cardas golden rule for speaker placement many older speakers can have problems when placed far from the wall behind them and can use a Baffle Step Compensation circuit. Most newer speakers and probably all new high end speakers have such compensation built in anticipating such placement. http://sound.westhost.com/bafflestep.htm For those not getting good sound initially with the Cardas placement, the circuit can help alot and let the speaker take advantage of the sonic principles such placement provides.

[geekwithfamily]

Hakka

I hope the humidity tweak has to do with static electricity build up on cables and components resulting in pops or maybe a haze. I hope it's not referring to how air molecules are excited by sound waves or anything.

You could try Vandersteen's suggestion of dividing the room length and width by odd numbers (1,3,5,7 etc. until you reach the side and front wall distances you need) and pick placements that are offset by at least two inches. I usually start with an equilateral triangle relationship between the listening position and the LR speakers. Since you're dealing with multiple channels you may find Widescreen Reviews "holographic" placement strategies useful (search on their site, you may have to become a subscriber to look at the archive and find the 8 part article). In a nutshell, every speaker should be an equal angle point around a multi-sliced pie with you in the middle.

The last environmental element that ruined a listening session for me was an empty stomach. I skipped lunch one day and developed listening fatigue immediately. I had to shut everything off. The music just made my head hurt. Weird.

[Hakka]

Here's the quote from the Cardas site:

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Get a humidity gauge. Your system will sound best if the room humidity is kept above 40%. Humidity helps kill the static in the room. Air conditioners and heaters (especially the wood burning stoves we have up here in Oregon) can suck all the moisture from your home. Throw a few plants into your listening room and spray them down. They'll raise the moisture content of the air and provide a little sound damping at the same time. I use ferns because they are large, have a lot of surface area and they're relatively cheap.
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I'll check out the widescreen review placement article.

Harry.

Hakka wrote:

Here's the quote from the Cardas site:

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Get a humidity gauge. Your system will sound best if the room humidity is kept above 40%. Humidity helps kill the static in the room.
Harry.

Any max limit that should be observed?
I am living in Singapore. There is no problem with humidity going below 40%. How about the otherway?

[geekwithfamily]

I think I've seen humidity levels in equipment specs (though I could be thinking of computers). At some point you might get condensation inside the chassis which could cause problems like short circuits.

[JCD]

I have heard that humidity makes a difference in a system, but I thought it had more to do with the speed of sound changing with the humidity in a room. I know some folks who recalibrate their systems a few times a year to take into account the changing climates.

For reference, he has an active system with a D'Appolito designed LCR. To get it design completely spot on, he changes the crossover for the changes in sound speed with the changing climate.

Killing the static electricity is something new to me..

JCD