Can book shelf speaker be placed horizontally?

[blessed]

Hello folks

I have a question.

Can the book shelf speakers placed horizontally instead of vertically? Will this affect the sound quality and/or output of the speakers?

Thanks

 

[Shivam]

I have found smearing of soundstage in some speaker models whereas in some others there was just a minimal change in sound signature (due to change in position of drivers with regards to room).

I have no experience with home theaters and with speakers playing a specfic role like central speaker for dialogues.

 

[corElement]

It varies bookshelf to bookshelf and upon their off axis performance.

 

[manoj.p]

The Tweeter and Midrange should line up vertically to avoid the lobing effect. If the bookshelf is 2 way, and has only one woofer/midrange, then you should not lay it horizontal.

The center speakers are designed in such a way that there a mid-range on each side of the tweeter to make lobing effect symmetrical. It does not get rid of it. That's the reason the center is called a "matched center" to the mains, not "exact center"

If you still want to place bookshelf horizontal, and if the tweeter has the guide on the front, make sure you unscrew that guide and rotate it 90 degrees.

 

[Pandamaudio]

One should avoid placing a two-way speaker horizontally as there will be a notch at the crossover point of the two drivers as shown in the diagram above when you listen to the speaker off-axis. This is because when you are off-axis, you are closer to one driver and further away from the second driver. So the sound arrives to your ears from one driver earlier and from the second driver later. This off-axis time difference causes a phase shift at crossover point thus you get a notch as indicated in red, in the diagram above

 

[navin advani]

The Tweeter and Midrange should line up vertically to avoid the lobing effect.

One should avoid placing a two-way speaker horizontally as there will be a notch at the crossover point of the two drivers as shown in the diagram above when you listen to the speaker off-axis.

I believe it depends on the crossover design.

One of the better imaging speakers I have heard was the Snell Type Ci. It had a mid and tweeter that were side by side (see link below).

http://www.oaktreevintage.com/web_photos/Stereo_Speakers/Snell_Type_C_stereo_Speakers_Web.jpg

Then again I loved almost everything Snell in those days (from 1982-85 - thanks to Peter Snell who passed in 1984 and Innovative Audio, Brooklyn) from the A/III to the Ci to the E/II.

 

[alpha1]

One should avoid placing a two-way speaker horizontally as there will be a notch at the crossover point of the two drivers as shown in the diagram above when you listen to the speaker off-axis. This is because when you are off-axis, you are closer to one driver and further away from the second driver. So the sound arrives to your ears from one driver earlier and from the second driver later. This off-axis time difference causes a phase shift at crossover point thus you get a notch as indicated in red, in the diagram above

If that really makes a big difference then most floorstanders in the market should fail. Let us see why.

The diagrams that you have presented depicts the case when tweeters and woofers lie on horizontal plane, and hence cause perturbations to the sound front arriving at each ear - since the path length between Left woofer and left ear is different from the path length between Left tweeter and left ear.

Now let's take a floors standing speaker. Unless the floor standing speaker in not adjusted for correct height - the same holds true.
The path length between Left ear and left woofer is not the same as path length between left ear and left tweeter.

Also the conventional wisdom of keeping the tweeter at ear height is also wrong then - because that will lead to greater path between ear and woofer than ear and tweeter.

 

[navin advani]

Now let's take a floors standing speaker. Unless the floor standing speaker in not adjusted for correct height - the same holds true.
The path length between Left ear and left woofer is not the same as path length between left ear and left tweeter.

Also the conventional wisdom of keeping the tweeter at ear height is also wrong then - because that will lead to greater path between ear and woofer than ear and tweeter.

I believe it is much more than that.

Woofers, Tweeters and the crossover (and cabinet) need to work together in a space.

Most conventional/commercial speakers use higher order crossovers (read as 2nd order+). All such crossovers introduce some phase shift. Hence the difference between the woofer-ear distance and tweeter-ear distance is sometimes partially compensated by this phase shift and sometimes made worse. Now I am not even going to reflections and reverbations as that would make everything even more complex.

Example: Some time back (about 25 years ago) Joe D'Appolito wrote a paper roughly titled "Geometric Approach to Eliminating Lobing Error in Loudspeakers". In that his experiments specifically stated that the type of crossover used was a 3rd order crossover (now this means the sum of driver roll off and electrical roll off) and he also laid norms for the crossover frequecny related to c-c distance and driver diameter etc.... Hence the venerable and now popular MTM was born. Today many companies have forgotten Joe's norms and their speakers sound bad. However if you implement all these norms correctly you could get a good sounding speaker.

So unless one can discuss a loudspeaker as a sum of it's parts (cabient, crossover, drivers, and cabin) any statement would way too generic to be correct.

 

[Pandamaudio]

If that really makes a big difference then most floorstanders in the market should fail. Let us see why.

The diagrams that you have presented depicts the case when tweeters and woofers lie on horizontal plane, and hence cause perturbations to the sound front arriving at each ear - since the path length between Left woofer and left ear is different from the path length between Left tweeter and left ear.

Now let's take a floors standing speaker. Unless the floor standing speaker in not adjusted for correct height - the same holds true.
The path length between Left ear and left woofer is not the same as path length between left ear and left tweeter.

Also the conventional wisdom of keeping the tweeter at ear height is also wrong then - because that will lead to greater path between ear and woofer than ear and tweeter.

The whole floor stander concept is considered rather weird by all the sensible loudspeaker design engineers I have known. Wikipedia's loudspeaker page describes the floor stander as 'An unusual three-way speaker system. The cabinet is narrow to raise the frequency where a diffraction effect called the "baffle step" occurs'
Loudspeaker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Audioman has mentioned some basic practical problems with floor standers in the thread BS vs FS

If I were to put down my opinion on the original discussion, very few high end Floorstanders are properly designed, and are mainly intended for large rooms and not for small and medium rooms. You cannot put them against a back wall (wall behind the speakers) as the bass will boom (because floor standers have no bass adjustments for this half space condition), and if you mount them away from the back wall, you get back-wall bass cancellations (unless you put them 3 to 4 meters away from the back wall behind the speakers, which is hard to do in small or medium rooms). Either way, you are screwed.

I would say the bookshelf is by far the better solution and can be complemented nicely with a subwoofer crossed over at around 80Hz. This way you can put the main speakers against the back wall and not get too much of a bass boom (which can also be adjusted if possible) or the bookshelves can be placed about 1.2 meters or more away from the back wall (if the subwoofer is crossed over at around 80Hz) completely avoiding any back wall cancellations. This works well in most rooms of any size. The subwoofer can be optimally placed against the back wall (wall behind the speakers) and adjusted for optimum performance. Easy to successfully implement this kind of system in almost any sort of room.

A well designed bookshelf speaker can be mounted vertically on a well designed stand with adjustable height and tilt angle, which is a solution to both the above problems you have described

 

[navin advani]

The whole floor stander concept is considered rather weird by all the sensible loudspeaker design engineers I have known.

Richard Vandersteen, Peter Snell, Dave Wilson, Lawrence Dickie, Edgar Vilchur, Roy Allison, Henry Kloss, Ken Kantor, Kevin Voecks, Albert von Schwiekert, Mike Kelly (was he still at DBX when the made the Soundfield series?), J.W Magnepan, Gayle Martin Sanders, Jon Bau, Jon Dahlquist, Floyd Toole (NRC), etc...have all designed floor standers in their day even if the DQ10 and Quad ESL were not really traditional floorstanders.

The Wikipedia description BTW is specifically for the Canon Karat 770 (and other loudspeakers with integrated side mounted subwoofers like the NHT 3.3 and it's look-alikes).

 

[omishra]

By looking at these both pictures, don't you think condition is same. Only we are looking from different angles.

Consider Horizontal position- While watching from top you can see interfering lobes. But watching from side each driver lobe will look like same to the drivers in second picture. Because from that angle both drivers will in same plane, horizontal.

Same case applied for vertical position, second diagram - watching from side same amount of lobe interference could be seen. From side both driver are in different plane. So only direction of lobe interference visibility changed which is perpendicular to speaker position.

Don't you think problem persists in both the cases unless taken care by other factors like crossover, toe and distance of listener? IMO otherwise , before coming to listener, sound waves could have already undergone to inter-modulation, if any

 

[Pandamaudio]

Richard Vandersteen, Peter Snell, Dave Wilson, Lawrence Dickie, Edgar Vilchur, Roy Allison, Henry Kloss, Ken Kantor, Kevin Voecks, Albert von Schwiekert, Mike Kelly (was he still at DBX when the made the Soundfield series?), J.W Magnepan, Gayle Martin Sanders, Jon Bau, Jon Dahlquist, Floyd Toole (NRC), etc...have all designed floor standers in their day even if the DQ10 and Quad ESL were not really traditional floorstanders.

The Wikipedia description BTW is specifically for the Canon Karat 770 (and other loudspeakers with integrated side mounted subwoofers like the NHT 3.3 and it's look-alikes).

I am sure they have all done great work in their various designs to contribute to the evolution of loudspeaker technology to what it is today. Thats led to a point where various kinds of loudspeaker systems were designed and built over time, and all the problems in them analysed and studied to provide the basis for certain design concepts that provide better technical excellence, reduced problems, easier implementability, and better performance like the bookshelf+subwoofer system.

By looking at these both pictures, don't you think condition is same. Only we are looking from different angles.

Consider Horizontal position- While watching from top you can see interfering lobes. But watching from side each driver lobe will look like same to the drivers in second picture. Because from that angle both drivers will in same plane, horizontal.

Same case applied for vertical position, second diagram - watching from side same amount of lobe interference could be seen. From side both driver are in different plane. So only direction of lobe interference visibility changed which is perpendicular to speaker position.

Don't you think problem persists in both the cases unless taken care by other factors like crossover, toe and distance of listener? IMO otherwise , before coming to listener, sound waves could have already undergone to inter-modulation, if any

Thats a Tannoy document deliberately exaggerating the distance between the two drivers on the baffle, so that it becomes easy to illustrate & explain. Good loudspeaker designs have the drivers placed very close to each other to minimize the problem, and active loudspeakers can even implement precision time alignment and phase alignment between the drivers for better accuracy. The Tannoy document does admit that the problem does not go away completely when you place a two-way loudspeaker system vertically, but since human movements are more often in the horizontal plane when walking or moving around the room, and less in the vertical plane when standing, sitting or lying down, the latter can be easily solved by simply adjusting the height and tilting the bookshelf speaker appropriately to aim towards the most desired listening position.

 

[navin advani]

Same case applied for vertical position, second diagram - watching from side same amount of lobe interference could be seen.

If you want a speaker that has neither tweeter on top nor on the side you'd have to go fullrange or concentric but both fullranges and concentric drivers have their challenges.

active loudspeakers can even implement precision time alignment and phase alignment between the drivers for better accuracy.

I assume you mean "active loudspeakers with DSP".

Active loudspeakers solve a lot of problems with only significant challenge in that each speaker needs to be connected to a power outlet, hence each speaker needs 2 cables going to it. A secondary challenge is that the preamp but be able to drive the signal via the line level cables to the speaker - for surround sound this might become serious.

In the end we really have to understand the application and then design and choose the loudspeakers that best meet the application. There is no one BEST solution.

Full/wide range drivers offer coherence at the cost of limited frequency response, concentric drivers have distortions if the tweeter inside the woofer's apex is not guided correctly, bookshelves are SPL limited, towers are essentially woofers married to bookshelves, and the list goes on.

So whether the speaker is mbl's Radialstrahler, NHT's 3.3, B&W Nautillus, Klipsch's La Scalla, Martin Logan's Sequel, or Sonus Faber's Amati each will fullfill a cetain need. If that need meets your need "all iz well" if not you will be a disatisfied listener.

 

[Big Unit]

I can see no real reason why you cannot.
Bose 301 I have placed horizontal.
An orchestra is placed horizontal, speakers push sound in a circular motion, like blowing bubbles. There is no axis.