speaker positioning

[mpw]

Hi,

i thought i would like to contribute my observations over the last week or so especially since i posted and withdrew a sale thread on my poor Epos M12i standmounts.

See attached pics.. one was where the speakers used to be and the other ohe is the one got in consultation with some very respected minds.

The reason i withdrew the sale was that i realised :-

a. the AV rack in the middle of the speakers is a totally bad idea. It is about 7.5 ft wide and when i played the speakers even with about 1 feet from the wall i realise each speaker was singing individually.

there was no handshake and resultantly no soundstage to speak of.

b. Now i came across the cardas speaker positioning ( thanks man ! ) and that set a few things in order. The width of mr rear wall is 12.75 ft and with that in mind i placed the speakers 3.4 ft from the side wall and speaker - speaker about 6 feet. The speakers were pulled out 1.75 meters from the rear wall.

Voila - communication, synergy, soundstage.. was soooo much better

c. One very senior FM was home yesterday and one of the line of thought was to pull the speakers even further forward from the edge of the AV rack ( and not measured from the wall ) and that gave much better sound. the female voices, tabla had that beat to it which i never got.

d. Seating position - equilateral triangle about 6 ft from the speaker and an old carpet thrown inbetween the speakers ( doesnt look good decor wise but worked fine sound wise ).

maybe i get a better carpet.. cheaper than getting new speakers na ??

I wondered why i wanted to sell the speakers at all !!

Few things in my mind which i thought i must record for all to discuss / comment etc..

:-

a. The smaller the speaker cabinet - the better it works with rear wall support - the other day the Amphion 410 was home and we were witness to the lovely sound it made. Nice bass etension.

b. The Eposes were inadverdently made to play again close to the rear wall - their cabinet size is larger - port on the rear and boy - no wonder there was moderate tango.

c. Possible the Spendors with the largest cabinet needed to be at the position of the Eposes in the attached picture ( the 2nd pic )

d. Most importantly - that day - we were all seated too far behind me thinks.

Would have been nice to see all of them play where i play the Eposes now.

d. My hall is the common entertainment area which shares space with TV etc.. and therefore in my house as in all others ( save 1 or 2 lucky ones with their own room ).. the room is the greatest compromise. :sad:

You can take your amp, cdp or speaker to the dealers place but not the room !!

e. having said that .. once you know your room.. it is important to work on the placement to get the speakers going.

f. At the price range of below a lakh.. there will not be significant difference in the output of a vast majority of speakers.

g. At a price point of maybe 1.5 to 2 L.. when money begins to sing ?? .. the speakers will beigin to sing too.. but that need not close the loop..

Indeed that can be the beginning of another upgrade.. of the electronics to match the speakers !!



the key is to reach a balance and stop for some time till the urge to change for variety :lol: strikes again ( maybe after 2 or 3 years of ownership ). Not change just because some speaker did some thing a touch better.

Unless it did something significantly better.

But largely once you realize your room i think you will be safe enough not to rock the boat too much and get into costly electronics. The attempt must be to push the envelope.. not tear the envelope completely.

denom and prem .. many thanks !!

To the guys who PM'ed me and encouraged me to stop the Epos sale.. cheers to you too !!

Not that nothing will change for me.. but i need to look hard for a very strong reason to change.

I wanted to start this thread so folks could upload photos of their stereo rigs withy actual seating position.

One can discuss implications of seating position here too..

I will let the thread flow.. hope it picks up steam in a very meaningful way.

even if it doesnt and if you happen to read this thread and it saves you some upgrade.. that would be nice !

regards
mpw

 

[john_k_antony]

Have one question though.

Will the distance from the rear that important for front ported bass reflex speakers? Or it makes more sense for the rear ported bass reflex speakers so that the speakers have some "breathing" space behind them for the bass reflex port to really work?

I am using KEF Q300 pretty close to the rear wall and they sound pretty good. Q300 is a front ported design. I think they are also suitable for wall mounting.

Thanks,
John.

 

[mpw]

john,

i suppose there are many folks in the forum worthy enough to comment but one thing that could be a possibility is the "imaging / imagery of sound" behind the speaker.

For HT applications, with the center & subwoofer doing most of the duties i am unsure about if imaging really matters to that level than it does for 2 ch stereo.

Porting on the speaker can make a difference though but the speakers do seem to communicate with the objects around them.

Eperimentation is the key.. though with HT i would prefer to leave things as they are if you are happy.

I hope i am making sense !!

mpw

 

[arj]

even if it doesnt and if you happen to read this thread and it saves you some upgrade..

Great Post and you could not be more right !:clapping:
So many folks upgrade speakers without getting the basics of Speaker positioning . An apt stand and the right seating/speaker position can do wonders to any setup !!
any discussions on power/cables should come up only if you have got the above right (along with a good source and amplification)

Have one question though.

Will the distance from the rear that important for front ported bass reflex speakers? Or it makes more sense for the rear ported bass reflex speakers so that the speakers have some "breathing" space behind them for the bass reflex port to really work?

I am using KEF Q300 pretty close to the rear wall and they sound pretty good. Q300 is a front ported design. I think they are also suitable for wall mounting.

Thanks,
John.

John , it is not jsut about the port but on giving enough space behind the speakers to
1. avoid 2nd level reflections from behind and sides of your speakers.if the reflection waves come almost the same time as the main wave the ear cannot differentiate and it does cause imaging issues. but our ears can filter out and discard reflected sound if the threshold is higher (i forget the value) and hence you get a good image. Since the harmonics are also impacted in the same way it does have an impact on tone.
2. the entire room acoustic if modelled varies a lot in SPL across all frequencies depending on the source(s) and the hearing position along with the basic L x b x h and other material composition in the room as different frequencies get enhanced/absorbed. and you change anything the sound changes

the min distance for front and rear ported is to avoid distortion in sound (ie rear ported close to will cause a chenge in the pressure asnt eh free flow of the port is affected) but any speaker needs space due to the above OR you need a lot of room treatment to negate it

 

[john_k_antony]

MPW,

Actually, I "retired" my KEFs from HT room. They are now doing 2 channel duties in my Living room and Bedroom . I was talking about the stereo performance of KEFs after I moved them out of the HT room.

I do have my KEF floor standers in my dedicate HT room for stereo. The room has pretty good level of acoustic treatment to deal with first and second reflection and floor to ceiling corner bass traps. My speakers are kept very close to the side wall may be 1' away and 3' away from the rear wall. I get pretty good imaging and separation. I am lucky to get the performance due to the acoustic treatment in the room

Thanks,
John.

 

[kuruvilajacob]

MPW,

Actually, I "retired" my KEFs from HT room. They are now doing 2 channel duties in my Living room and Bedroom . I was talking about the stereo performance of KEFs after I moved them out of the HT room.

I do have my KEF floor standers in my dedicate HT room for stereo. The room has pretty good level of acoustic treatment to deal with first and second reflection and floor to ceiling corner bass traps. My speakers are kept very close to the side wall may be 1' away and 3' away from the rear wall. I get pretty good imaging and separation. I am lucky to get the performance due to the acoustic treatment in the room

Thanks,
John.

I had visited John last week and listened to some nice detailed sound stage in his HT room. He has done a lot of home work before he planned his HT room and it has paid off. What I noticed is that when the speakers are placed wider, the details are also spread across the entire spectrum. It was a good experience. Anyone wanting to build a HT room, John is the man to consult.

 

[vijwilso]

One thing i noticed that music in stereo mode never sounded the best in the complete acoustically treated room for HT , felt like the sound energy is sucked-in , like dead sound , no liveliness . However it works good for 5.1/7.1 configuration .

For music , I liked it when the acoustic treatment is minimal/optimal , like the panels behind the speakers , Carpet , some panel behind the listeners , lot of space between the speakers and side wall

John , It would be interesting to see the picture of your room setup

 

[kuruvilajacob]

One thing i noticed that music in stereo mode never sounded the best in the complete acoustically treated room for HT , felt like the sound energy is sucked-in , like dead sound , no liveliness . However it works good for 5.1/7.1 configuration .

For music , I liked it when the acoustic treatment is minimal/optimal , like the panels behind the speakers , Carpet , some panel behind the listeners , lot of space between the speakers and side wall

John , It would be interesting to see the picture of your room setup

I agree with you. The stereo sound may lose a little bit of punch when acoustic treatment is overdone or rather done for HT rooms. But I found John's HT room to be good in that it could deliver wide sound stage with lots of details and as observed by killerbrain, there is a little bit of liveliness lacking which could be due the treatment for HT

 

[ghatgepatil]

Check the 2nd video in the first post of this thread (http://www.hifivision.com/av-lounge/49427-avidyarthys-den.html). It is possible that some amount of increased toe-in is called for with your speakers, other than some decrease in the distance from the front wall. Yes, a bit of patient playing around (as regards distance from the front wall) may be necessary to get the soundstage and imaging right. I guess, 3 ft. to 4 ft. at the max. from the front wall should be sufficient.

 

[Santy]

I agree. Toe-in of the speakers have a tremendous effect on the imaging. A mild toe in could help to focus a sharp imaging at the listening position, however a more than necessary angle could result in a constricted soundstage. It also helps to bring the sweet spot closer to the speakers if space is a constrain.

I have of late been realising that the first order reflection helps in a wider soundstage. Sometimes I am tempted to keep the two DIY acoustic panels at first points of reflection but within no time I move it to the rear because I feel the spaciousness is compromised though the details improved. In such situations, toe-in can be of great help. It pushes the first point of reflection closer or beyond the listening position helping to minimize the smearing of image caused by the reflections.

If the horizontal off axis performance of the speaker is weak then toe-in would greatly help in tonal balance. On the flip side, if the speakers are on the brighter side, then toe-in could cause high frequency strain at the listening position.

Ideally, one could keep experimenting with the speaker positioning till they achieve the best result - after all, they are the best (and zero cost) tweaks one could apply.

 

[Shivam]

There are some good spreadsheets and applets available on the net that calculate room modes and ideal speaker placements based on them and some other similar data. I had used one similar spreadsheet to calculate the exact speaker positions in my room and then tweaked the positions a little to get the best sound.

Spreadsheet available with http://www.acoustica.org.uk/ is a good place to start.

 

[john_k_antony]

I agree with you. The stereo sound may lose a little bit of punch when acoustic treatment is overdone or rather done for HT rooms. But I found John's HT room to be good in that it could deliver wide sound stage with lots of details and as observed by killerbrain, there is a little bit of liveliness lacking which could be due the treatment for HT

I had the privilege of Kuruvila sir visiting my home for a quick demo. He promised for a longer session at my place next time he is in Bangalore.

During his short demo, he observed the following.

1. Though the highs and mids were detailed, there was a lack of energy in the low end. There was a lack of liveliness too.
Today morning I started hooking up my Emotiva amps XPA 200 and UPA 500. These amps were primarily bought for HT use and will power my klipsch home theatre speakers. But just to check the stereo performance of XPA 200, I just connected it to my pass b1 pre and KEF floor standers. I replaced my 75w Acoustic Portrait power amp in the chain with this 140w Emo. I could easily notice the following changes

1. More loudness with lower volume.
2. Improved low end extension and weight.
3. Sound stage remained more or less the same.
4. Marginal improvement in "liveliness". I feel that KEFs are comparatively polite speakers and when put in a treated room, they tend to behave more polite. I think my room needs highly dynamic speakers. KEFs are put in as a stop gap arrangement till I get my stereo speaker and amp upgrade .

I tried toe in and felt that it actually "robbed" some of the low end extension from there speakers. I am getting better overall performance with speakers standing 13.5' apart, no toe in, with 1' gap from the side walls and 3' gap from rear wall. The listening spot is around 18' from the speakers.

I am going to hook up my Klipsch with the new amps later in the afternoon for HT and I feel that Klipsch might sound more lively in my room for both stereo and HT.

Will start a new thread to share my experience.

Thanks,
John.

 

[john_k_antony]

One thing i noticed that music in stereo mode never sounded the best in the complete acoustically treated room for HT , felt like the sound energy is sucked-in , like dead sound , no liveliness . However it works good for 5.1/7.1 configuration .

For music , I liked it when the acoustic treatment is minimal/optimal , like the panels behind the speakers , Carpet , some panel behind the listeners , lot of space between the speakers and side wall

John , It would be interesting to see the picture of your room setup

Dude,

It would be great if you could visit my place and experience it yourself . I know our meeting is long due. I have some renovation work going on at my home. Will get over in couple of weeks. Let's plan for a meet after that.

You can take a look at my HT build thread for more details and some pics.

John.

 

[kuruvilajacob]

I had a chat with John this morning. Yes, a set up like John's would need high powered amps to deliver the punch as experienced by John when he hooked up Emotiva. What is good in such a set up is that any minute change will be noticed instantly and remedial measures if necessary can be taken. John is on the right track in achieving 'Nirvana' in the near future

 

[spirovious]

I just posted my small observation in another thread and now found this one.
http://www.hifivision.com/what-should-i-buy/8665-post-your-latest-av-purchase-s-223.html#post563070

 

[vijwilso]

Dude,

It would be great if you could visit my place and experience it yourself . I know our meeting is long due. I have some renovation work going on at my home. Will get over in couple of weeks. Let's plan for a meet after that.

You can take a look at my HT build thread for more details and some pics.

John.

Sure John , Let us meet .

 

[denom]

Nice thread mpw!

Glad to hear that your happy with what you have currently & are now going to enjoy your set-up more than before.

This hobby of ours is like going on a rollercoaster ride, which is full of surprises.
Patience is always the key, a virtue which not many of us have in our favor leading to rash decisions being taken, mostly leading to a wrong direction.

Whilst I agree to some of your observations which you have alphabetically bullet-ed, I also dis-agree to some but will discuss about them with you in person, lest some FM(s) get hurt/upset by me saying so here

Have been experimenting with some rather plain jane/ordinary electronics & cabling with good speakers & have been proved that if you optimise what you have to play with, you can get surprisingly good results pretty much effortlessly. So whilst theory is good, practice is where the fun & actual learning really is.

In short, start with what you've got & max its potential out to the fullest before pulling the upgrade trigger!

 

[john_k_antony]

All Right guys,

Apologies for high jacking this thread!!! I just "started" having fun with playing around (positioning and level and phase matching) with 2 Sub woofers in the same room for right bass. Today for the first time in my experience, I heard and also "felt" bass energy changing SIGNIFICANTLY with position changes and phase changes with 2 sub woofer. I think I have too much "crawling" to do to get it right .

I started with placing 2 subs facing each other on the left and right walls, almost at the mid way and now playing around with different phase (0, 90, 180, 270) on both the subs.

I am using the recommendations from here as a starting point.

Subwoofer Placement - The Place for Bass Part 1 | Audioholics

I got it working okay for movies, but then it kinda didn't work for music. I think I am hoping for too much here to get an optimal sub placement and configuration that works well for 90% movies and 10% music (ONLY metal, hard rock, techno and house music). The above genre seems to go well with a Klipsch + Sub-woofer combo.

Would be great if you guys could share your experience with dual Sub-woofers.

-John.

 

[manoj.p]

John,

The crawling way for subwoofer placement is trying to find one thing - where the room excites the mode and make the sub loudest. Since, it works fine for low powered, single subs because it gives max loudness for money, it causes more problems by exciting few modes and causing nulls in another. If you already have multiple subs, then firepower is already there and no need for crawling.

Instead, your approach should be finding the room modes in your room and nulls. Then place these accordingly. There are lots of resources on web for predicting and calculating room modes. But I have to say, putting subs at midpoint of opposite wall is best way to start. Another approach would be if you put subs at 25% from each corner against the front wall. Try different positions and see if it helps. I have my subs at this location.

For sub performance, it also matters where you are seating vs your room length. Seating at midpoint of the room is the worst location. It can go into very much detailed discussion, so not sure if its a good idea of hi-jacking this thread. ;-)

 

[arj]

My suggestion , start with one sub, put the phase at 0 and place the sub at moderately high volume at your seating position ie at the place your chair is. Now walk around the room to see where it is the loudest with music playing. That is the best sub position

Now put the sub there and have someone play with the phase and at the phase you get the highest volume is the best phase

This way you are 80% there. Place the other sub symmetrically opposite ans do the same with the phase and volume with the first sub off.

Now adjust the volume so that the subs just begins to be heard else it blends I ( easier said than done) ideally you should not hear the subs when On but miss it when off.