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Speaker Placement

E

elkman70

pfm Member
Posted Sat 27 November 2010 14:14
Hello everybody.

I feel that I have cracking Stereo, CD5x/HiCap/202/HiCap/NAPSC/200/MA GS10.

I now want to optimise my speaker positioning but really don't know where to start.

My room is 7.1m (23'3") long by 3.6m (11'10" wide and 2.3m (7'6") high.

My speakers fire across the short distance in my room. They are about 2.5m apart, away from the wall by about 40cm and slightly toed in. The speakers are Monitor Audio GS10.

I am wondering if anybody knows of some good advice on speaker placement whether it be practical knowledge or links to free software, etc.

Thanks,

Nick
 
Nick

The only thing you can trust are your ears. Forget about software and theories and just shift the speakers around and leave them put for a few hours and reposition again. You will eventually find where the optimum sound comes frome.

The same applies to toeing in, just experiment until you and your ears are happy.

As a rule of thumb, speakers should be about 7ft apart but that's just the starting position. Also firing across the room is generally preferred but JV perferred to fire down the length, so it is all down to personal preference.

So take your time and you will do it.

Regards

Mick
 
I would second everything that Mick has said in post #2. The first thing to decide, assuming that room layout allows it, is whether you prefer them firing across the shorter, or longer, axis of the room.
 
The ear is very good at picking out resonant peaks, but not so good at cancellations. The random shifting of loudspeakers will change their bass response in the room, but cause and effect will be much harder to isolate. My method requires an SPL meter and 1/3-octave warble tones between 20Hz and 200Hz.

1. Locate the SPL meter at your preferred listening position, preferably on a tripod at the right height.

2. If your room is symmetrical, locate the loudspeaker pair symmetrically (equidistant from respective side-walls and front wall) and measure at a reasonable level (80-90dB) to get a baseline. The measured result, when plotted on a logarithmic scale, will look somewhat lumpy.

3. Shift the loudspeaker pair one and two feet forward and back, and towards/away from their side-walls and re-measure. This will produce 14 more sets of measurements. By comparing the graphs, you will see a pattern emerging and will see how your room modifies your loudspeakers' bass response.

4. One of these will be flatter than the rest. If not, consider changing your listening position. Otherwise, reset the loudspeakers to their respective positions for this, and repeat the measurements in 6-inch increments fore, aft and sideways. From the resulting nine sets of measurements, one will be flatter still.

5. You could repeat this in 3-inch increments and get down to millimetre precision depending on how much of a perfectionist you are.

6. Sit back, and marvel at how much more tuneful the bass has become, and how much more intelligible music is.

The final arbiter of correctly positioned loudspeakers in a room is how evenly bass notes pressurise the room. When done correctly, you should not get boom in the corners nor a bass-free centre.

James
 
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