speaker positioning

[Thad E Ginathom]

speaker positioning issues and challanges

I have been browsing Gear.Slutz quite a lot over the past couple of days, because I am planning new speakers for the desk, and the desk is now my prime listening place.

One thing that struck me yesterday, was a statement from one guy that he expects to spend as much on room conditioning as on his monitors ...and we are not talking cheap monitors. Apart from small scale home or hobby stuff, those engineers don't seem to think it even worth starting without a properly treated room. In another conversation, somebody is advising [paraphrased] "why buy bigger, more-bass speakers, when you are playing them into an untreated room: the effect will be just muddier bass."

Has the "audiophile" world, with its obsessions with equipment, cables, etc, totally missed the right route and taken a wrong turning?

 

[IndianEars]

"why buy bigger, more-bass speakers, when you are playing them into an untreated room: the effect will be just muddier bass."

TOTALLY Agree.

Many ( most) Audiophiles (IMO) "Throw out the Baby with the Bath water" and set up their systems which are bass deficient.

For me, the lower 3 to 4 octaves, and even the Lowest 2 Octaves are what makes the music come-to-life (audiophile to me ).

Ofcourse we all listen to music differently, and prioritise differently .....

To each their own :beer:

 

[Hari Iyer]

Baffle step is a known issue and needs to be tackled with proper speaker placement to get the correct sound stage. Unfortunately many commercial designs do not incorporate them because they do not know where the speaker may be placed in a room for the calculations. Earlier designs od 60s and 70s had a switch for matching this contour. Lately DSPs are used to measure and correct the room anomolies. My design will use a similar passive network to do the room contour correction. It will be placed between the source and the amp and will apply correction before the signal is amplified.

Future design will allow to apply the corrections from various frequencies and SPL.giving more wider control.

 

[mpw]

hey guys,

am slowly experimenting with pushing my speakers a few inches backwards and about a touch wider.

Getting pretty decent sound at about speaker to speaker distance about 7.2 ft and at about 15 inches from the rear wall.

Have a feeling if i move the speakers closer together by just about a few inches..that would be a a thicker soundstage width. ( speaker - speaker maybe about 6ft 7 inches or so )

Question - with the standmounts - me thinks about 6.5 feet between the speakers gets in good sound for me. If i do switch to floorstanders.. can i afford to keep the speakers even wider ? considering that the surface area of a floorstander is > standmount ?

regards
mpw
===============================================================

 

[mpw]

in theory - what would a sealed speaker do to the speaker positioning ?

would it be better closer to the rear walls since there is no port to speak of ?

Thats an experiment i wanted to do when i had the Merlins home ( courtesy HFV FM ) for some time but i guess it slipped my mind.

mpw

 

[Tanoj]

what would a sealed speaker do to the speaker positioning ?

i would say a sealed speaker too will need some space around and behind them,

i checked out Paradigm signature S4 at a FM members place and they are front ported, still they were placed around few feets distance from rear wall, so i assume spacing is required

Tanoj

 

[trittya]

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

Dear mpw et al,
My two lousy (dated) phooti kaudies here . . .
http://www.hifivision.com/diy/20861-wilson-speaker-placement-know-how.html

HTH
Regards

 

[IndianEars]

A Couple Of SUPERB Reads on Speaker Placement:

Throwing Open the Window on System Performance: Achieving Proper Speaker Placement - The Audio Beat - www.TheAudioBeat.com

and

http://www.theaudiobeat.com/blog/speaker_placement.pdf This is a pdf file download.

 

[arj]

A Couple Of SUPERB Reads on Speaker Placement:

Throwing Open the Window on System Performance: Achieving Proper Speaker Placement - The Audio Beat - www.TheAudioBeat.com

and

http://www.theaudiobeat.com/blog/speaker_placement.pdf This is a pdf file download.

IndianEars, Roy gregory is the one who is demonstrating the same on You Tube
http://www.hifivision.com/audio-vid...-under-cables-change-sound-33.html#post573628

BTW anyone seen this yet ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2NdpLAeZvEs

interested to hear views. Needless to say, better if you hook it to your music system

I had put down the time locations to compare if you feel like it
Track 1 : 5:00, 9:59, 13:03
Track 2: 14:41, 19:01, 20:07
Track 3: 26:15, 28:05, 31:03, 36:06

suggest once you hear on track move back to an earlier one suddenly as well.

It fine not to hear the differences..just watch the clip in entirety, it gives some very good pointers on media and the acoustics and how to set it up

I tried it out in HD but wish we had a better audio resolution available

 

[manoj.p]

in theory - what would a sealed speaker do to the speaker positioning ?

would it be better closer to the rear walls since there is no port to speak of ?

Thats an experiment i wanted to do when i had the Merlins home ( courtesy HFV FM ) for some time but i guess it slipped my mind.

mpw

A sealed speaker with the same baffle size and same driver sizes will have the same challenges as a ported speaker, except one - the limitation posed by the rear port. It will not need the breathing space needed by the port in the back.

One benefit with sealed speakers or port on the front is that you put those against the wall. That will give it a 6 db boost for lower frequencies. You can then use an eq to bass tone control to bring it down. You can play with different positions. This is still not ideal but is quite a benefit when real estate is most important.

Another advantage is, you can mount these on wall, alongwith LCD tv. Then put small absorbers/diffusers between the space of tv & speakers. If you can align the front edge of tv and speaker and fill it completely, then you have your own baffle wall. The baffle wall is the best solution to get rid of defraction, baffle step and back reflection cancellation.

 

[arj]

in theory - what would a sealed speaker do to the speaker positioning ?

would it be better closer to the rear walls since there is no port to speak of ?

Thats an experiment i wanted to do when i had the Merlins home ( courtesy HFV FM ) for some time but i guess it slipped my mind.

mpw

MPW, from what understand the primary factor for the placement of a speaker with regards to walls is in the Rolloff curve

My suggestion is not to get into the ported Vs Sealed box while doing so as Ported can mean front/rear and ported under the speaker as well so any generic comment on that is meaningless

what is important is to see the Rolloff Curve usually given in terms of dbs/octave and also its damping factor or Q. i dont what to talk iof things i do not know much so someone like Viren or Hari Iyer can explain that much better than my attempt.

Regarding boost. assume each wall will give you a 3 db boost in bass . so a corner will give you 9 (including floor) and any wall 6db

since this so intrinsic to the design of a speaker (irrespective of what kind) you will get the best advice from the speaker manual itself

From my experience, the Merlins do well near the walls at around 12-18 cms from the edge, although near the corners they do tend to be boomy as they are even at 1.5 db till 55 hz, 3db at 40 and 10 db at 35. so there is a sharp drop which helps when near the walls but near the corner the midrange also gets much thicker.
so ideally i would keep them 3 feet from the rear and around a min of 1 feet away from the walls in a say 12x14 room. as the room gets bigger you will need to get them nearer to the walls.

 

[hydra]

in theory - what would a sealed speaker do to the speaker positioning ?

would it be better closer to the rear walls since there is no port to speak of ?

Thats an experiment i wanted to do when i had the Merlins home ( courtesy HFV FM ) for some time but i guess it slipped my mind.

mpw

My subjective take on this:

I don't think the degree of acceptable proximity of the speakers to the rear walls has a lot to do with the porting, except for the fact that the port will need a bit of airspace.

Other than the general loudness boost in lower frequencies, I've noticed a certain undesirable "peaking" in the vocals, similar to the bite of a trumpet (not so good when this happens to vocals) as the speakers get closer to the rear walls (even to the side walls, if the distance between the speaker and the rear walls is not much).

As we pull the speakers forward into the room, this undesirable bite disappears and the vocals sound more open and smoother. I'm sure this problem affects the rest of the instruments too, but to me, it is more prominent in the vocals.

This is based on my experience in my room (which gets narrower as we approach the wall behind the speakers) with rear-ported speakers, front-ported speakers, and horn-loaded speakers.

 

[mpw]

hydra,

i largely ( and intuitively ) agree - in part.

The distance of a speaker into the room.. in theory.. is not a function of porting though front ported speakers and sealed speakers can be operated maybe 10% ( roughly ) closer to the walls than rear ports.

The other point of consideration is the floorstanders have larger speaker surface area as compared to traditional standmounts. And this may be impacting the distance from the rear wall if we consider the speaker to be 1 single radiator of sound.

This will also imply that floorstanders can be placed farther apart from each other and can in theory give a wider soundstage and therefore a wider listening area.

May also be the reason - why standmounts ( by and large ) image better than floorstanders.

am open to correction..

mpw

 

[hydra]

I'd also tend to think the same way about floorstanders.

I haven't listened to a lot of conventional floorstanders, and with the exception of an AP Floorstander (two-way) and a Vandersteen 2CE Signature, I personally don't like how they generally sound, or present the music at all. By conventional, I mean the multi-driver floorstanders, and not the single driver (full rangers) ones. The Vandersteen was being bi-amped, so that could have changed things.

My complaints mostly have to do with the very loose and vague imaging, and the odd (to me) bass response they bring out (too much 'physical' bass). I've always preferred standmounts for these two reasons.

 

[arj]

I'd also tend to think the same way about floorstanders.

I haven't listened to a lot of conventional floorstanders, and with the exception of an AP Floorstander (two-way) and a Vandersteen 2CE Signature, I personally don't like how they generally sound, or present the music at all. By conventional, I mean the multi-driver floorstanders, and not the single driver (full rangers) ones. The Vandersteen was being bi-amped, so that could have changed things.

My complaints mostly have to do with the very loose and vague imaging, and the odd (to me) bass response they bring out (too much 'physical' bass). I've always preferred standmounts for these two reasons.

Again very difficult to generalise it as there are floorstanders designed well and then there are those designed just so that it is a floorstander

If i were to generalize as well, a floor stander is a lot more difficult to integerate than a standmount due to the extra extension a. Thats why a sub + standmount is very often preferred other than that combo being a lot more cheaper for the same extension as the sub can be moved around fro the best bass reproduction

But if you were to really look at a true full range 2/3 way speaker, setup well, the dynamics a 10 or a 12 inch driver can provide is unbelievable. but that comes at least at 3-4 times the price

 

[manoj.p]

hydra,

i largely ( and intuitively ) agree - in part.

The distance of a speaker into the room.. in theory.. is not a function of porting though front ported speakers and sealed speakers can be operated maybe 10% ( roughly ) closer to the walls than rear ports.

The other point of consideration is the floorstanders have larger speaker surface area as compared to traditional standmounts. And this may be impacting the distance from the rear wall if we consider the speaker to be 1 single radiator of sound.

This will also imply that floorstanders can be placed farther apart from each other and can in theory give a wider soundstage and therefore a wider listening area.

May also be the reason - why standmounts ( by and large ) image better than floorstanders.

am open to correction..

mpw

I think you will find this article much beneficial. Not a generic comment either.
Wall behind the Loudspeaker Cancellation

 

[hydra]

Manoj, That was an interesting read!

So, going by that article, if we can't flush-mount a speaker, or if we can't use absorption on the wall behind the speaker, the best option (esp. for large speakers) is to place them very close to the wall (very convenient for most people) or place them very far away from the wall.

Since the "considerably far away" is probably less easier to get right, going by that article, a large speaker is best placed between 0 and 20 cms from the wall behind it.

Coming from Genelec, I'd definitely take this very seriously. So does this article apply to all kinds of enclosures? The article definitely doesn't specify sealed/ported etc., and it looks like this applies to all kinds of loudspeakers.

But isn't this (placing speakers very close to the wall behind them) likely to compromise the depth and width of the soundstage? Also, this seems to go against conventional speaker placement tips. I'd love to hear what everybody else has to say about this, based on their experiences.

 

[hydra]

Again very difficult to generalise it as there are floorstanders designed well and then there are those designed just so that it is a floorstander

If i were to generalize as well, a floor stander is a lot more difficult to integerate than a standmount due to the extra extension a. Thats why a sub + standmount is very often preferred other than that combo being a lot more cheaper for the same extension as the sub can be moved around fro the best bass reproduction

But if you were to really look at a true full range 2/3 way speaker, setup well, the dynamics a 10 or a 12 inch driver can provide is unbelievable. but that comes at least at 3-4 times the price

No doubt that I did generalize quite a bit about floorstanders, especially considering that I've not listened to many of them

Perhaps non-optimum placement is what has made me not like the floorstanders I've listened to.

 

[arj]

But isn't this (placing speakers very close to the wall behind them) likely to compromise the depth and width of the soundstage? Also, this seems to go against conventional speaker placement tips. I'd love to hear what everybody else has to say about this, based on their experiences.

The article is quite right but it is only dealing with a very specific problem ie cancellation due to the back wall.

There are other factors like back wall reflections, side wall/ceiling/floor reflection
Cancellations due to opposite walls/standing waves etc etc which must also be looked at if you are placing in a room. not to mention the relativity of the seating position

IMHO the Cardas/Wilson etc .... methods are a lot more comprehensive from a placement point of view

 

[mpw]

it is possible, though that i am speaking from my own experiences and also the fact that a truly well designed floorstander comes at a high price.

ofcourse my knowledge would be much lesser than the collective wisdom of many experiences in this forum and outside and its here that "making choices " wrt ones specific room, seating position, associated electronics and overall funds come into play.

mpw