Speaker Positioning for Stereo

[reubensm]

Over the last 2 weeks, I have been experimenting with different positions for my speakers and rack, in my new listening space. I have finally settled for the original positioning (which was intended when the house was designed). The speakers are in front beside a large door with french windows, overlooking a valley, the rig is located at the back of the room in a corner, in line with the theoritical approach, not to position anything in between the speakers. The results were the best with this approach.

I found this article quite useful and practical. Its easy flowing and very easy to interpret and I used it for guidance.

http://www.hifiportal.co.uk/Articles/Article0008-Positioning speakers for 2-channel stereo.pdf

On another note, a lot of us place our rack in between the speakers as we love to sit back and admire or rigs while they play. I thought I'll try something different on this front. Taking a constant look at the rack tends to keep one distracted (worrying about settings, etc) and one cannot really enjoy the music. I noticed that I enjoyed the music much better when the rack was not in sight hyeah:

 

[vnmathur57]

++1 to that!

 

[Record Player]

Funny that you din't enjoy looking at the Rack ... I wonder LOL

On a serious note, well said Reuben, with the rack placed between the speakers, your tend to focus on the equipment, setting etc. You really dont sit back and enjoy your music and keep fiddling with stuff.

What I've done in my pad, is placed a rack between the speakers but equipment only related to 5.1 setup and media player Etc so in that way I don't fiddle much when watching movies and stuff.

For my 2c stereo setup, Ive placed the rack elsewhere and I really get to enjoy my music with no much of fiddling around.

BTW, please post some pictures of your new rig showing off the valley as well .

 

[AmitKumar]

sometime back i met somebody who have harbeth speakers and full hifi rack of other audio equipments like tube amp, cd player, dac, power amp etc. He is not a member of our forum.

his placements of speakers is somthing like mentioned by Reubensm, one speaker on each side of the french window and the hifirack is about 12 to 15 feet away from the speakers.

While listing to the music you are looking at the speakers and the hifi rack is about 5 to 6 feet away on your right side, you end up only looking at the speakers without bothering much about the other audio equipments.

 

[murali]

On another note, a lot of us place our rack in between the speakers as we love to sit back and admire or rigs while they play. I thought I'll try something different on this front. Taking a constant look at the rack tends to keep one distracted (worrying about settings, etc) and one cannot really enjoy the music. I noticed that I enjoyed the music much better when the rack was not in sight hyeah:[/QUOTE]

There are easier ways. Cover your eyes with a piece of cloth, or even easier, close your eyes and just listen to the music.

Many, including me, keep the rack at a corner behind the speakers (provided you have no subwoofers) and that works just fine. The rack affects the soundstage only when kept between the speakers on the same plane. If your speakers are standing a few feet away from the walls, that is how they should be, keeping the rack close to the wall even between the speakers will be okay.

Just my 2 cents, please.

cheers.
murali

 

[prepress]

I have placed my speakers near the wall (in front) but the rack is placed near/ the sitting arrangements so that I can reach and play with my settings easily

 

[kuruvilajacob]

I have a friend who had all equipments in one room and only 2 speakers in the listening room. It was unique as there was nothing to distract you from concentrating only on music. I understand he has since changed this arrangement do to space constraints. But this had given me the inspiration to have a dedicated listening room and I regard that person as my Guru.

 

[ghatgepatil]

No pun intended here but you can't put your rig in between your speakers because of the big door. Anyway, somewhat agree to your point of view too, of keeping the rig someplace else.

However, can provide some suggestions on the speaker placements.
1. Bring up both the speakers by about 3' to 4' from the front wall.

2. Position both the speakers so, that they are @ 7' (max.) from each other. Reference point = centre of the woofers.

3. In other words, the speaker outer limits should be within the French windows, if looking from front.

4. Depending upon the distance between the two speakers, you should have @ 2.5' free space from each of the side walls.

5. Provide a 'slight' toe-in to the speakers @ 5 deg.

This way, any person wanting to admire "nature" would have sufficient space to carry himself to the verandah, without toppling the speakers.

The above recipe should make the speakers disappear during 'most' performances!

 

[hydra]

I think that in most cases, the rack ends up close to the speakers, when the speaker cable length needs to be kept at a minimum. People who use exotic (and expensive) speaker cables may not like to have long runs.

Also, there is also that school of thought that advocates keeping the speaker cable length under 3 meters whenever possible.

 

[reubensm]

No pun intended here but you can't put your rig in between your speakers because of the big door. Anyway, somewhat agree to your point of view too, of keeping the rig someplace else.

However, can provide some suggestions on the speaker placements.
1. Bring up both the speakers by about 3' to 4' from the front wall.

2. Position both the speakers so, that they are @ 7' (max.) from each other. Reference point = centre of the woofers.

3. In other words, the speaker outer limits should be within the French windows, if looking from front.

4. Depending upon the distance between the two speakers, you should have @ 2.5' free space from each of the side walls.

5. Provide a 'slight' toe-in to the speakers @ 5 deg.

This way, any person wanting to admire "nature" would have sufficient space to carry himself to the verandah, without toppling the speakers.

The above recipe should make the speakers disappear during 'most' performances!

I'm trying this over the weekend. I actually started off with the speakers in front of the French Windows but move them apart as my little 2 year old son loves to perch himself on those French window sills while music is playing. Nevertheless, I did notice that the imaging was better with the closer positioning. That's this week's experiment as I've not tried this with the new Finolex cables. The earlier try was with the stock BPL cables.

 

[sdurani]

Position both the speakers so, that they are @ 7' (max.) from each other. Reference point = centre of the woofers.

He can get much smoother/flatter bass response by positioning the centre of the woofers exactly 1/2 of room width apart.

This is especially helpful if the main listening position is at the middle of room width, where peaks & dips are most severe.

Getting rid of those variations in the frequency response will reproduce all sounds more equally, letting him hear details that would normally be masked by loud peaks or hidden in quiet dips.

 

[jls001]

2. Position both the speakers so, that they are @ 7' (max.) from each other. Reference point = centre of the woofers.

7 feet shouldn't be considered some magic number. The two speakers and the listener should form an equilateral triangle. Depending on how large is one's room width and length, the size of the equilateral triangle varies. If one has a larger room, the speakers get more spread out, and the listening distance also goes up correspondingly.

Of course, this ignores the "ideal" placement methods like the Cardas method or Vandersteen method, which says that the speakers must be at so and so distance from the front and side walls.

If the room (and other non-room factors) allow experimentation, a practical method is to start off with the Cardas method of placing the speakers at one-third into the room, as measured from the front wall, and at 1/5 distance from side walls (one-fifth of the room width). Listener sits a further one-third into the room, meaning two-thirds distance measured from front wall. In this method, you will find that the speakers are really close to each other and you have left so much room between the front wall and the speakers!

Here's the Cardas calculator:

Cardas Speaker Placement Calculator

An alternative is to place speakers at 1/5 distance from front wall (one-fifth of the length = longer room dimension). This can be more acceptable to many as it leaves more room in the room for other usages.

Real-life placement: use the above as a starting point, and slowly but gradually move your speakers around till you arrive at a sound you think is best.

What is best?
When you have sufficient distance from speakers to front wall, you should get a sense of front to back depth. Of course one need not leave space for wall mounted speakers. Another effect that's highly dependent on distance to front wall is the bass strength.
When the distance between the speakers is right and the toe-in is correct, one should get a good sense of lateral separation without it sounding disembodied, meaning the left and right speakers should not sound like they are playing two different music. Most of the music should sound as if it is coming from exactly the center of the two speakers.

In my limited experience, leaving less space to the side walls matters much less than leaving less room between the speakers and front wall.

But coming back to "7 feet" separation, about 7 to 8 feet is a fairly practical consideration for our listening room sizes. With most speakers that has mid to tweeter crossover near 2 kHz or higher, there tends to be a gap where the phantom stereo center ought to be when speakers are placed too far apart. Tweeters that can go lower are less likely to suffer from this gap.

The point being - it's complicated:lol: Here's one time when the caveat "your mileage may vary" strongly applies.

Cardas room setup guide for different room types: Cardas Room Setup Guide

Bottom line: if your speakers don't sound right, now you know you can blame your room, the crossover frequency, the shape and size of triangles, etc

 

[ghatgepatil]

I too followed the Cardas method initially. The only reason I digressed from its suggestions was the overall room aesthetics. Meaning, the equilateral triangle 'formation' gave an unacceptable look to the room. The speaker positioning became too close (for visual comfort) to my seating position!!! It was giving the impression that the speakers were right on my face!

That made me play around. The one suggested is the current placement which worked the best for me. Its practically the same that I have it at my home. My room's slightly smaller, hence the distance between the two speakers is at 6.5', they are @ 3.5' in front of the front wall and @ 2' from the side walls. My sitting position is @ 8' from the speaker fronts. Yes, I do have a solid rear wall, which is another 6' behind my sitting position.

The OP's case is a bit different. as he has a large open space behind his sitting position! That might lead to 'some' differences in the positioning I have suggested.

 

[jls001]

Here's another though on speaker placement from RealTraps. They recommend placing your speakers at 38% of the room length, measured from the front wall. The calculation for the distance from the side walls is unduly complicated.

RealTraps - How To Set Up a Room

 

[Shivam]

There some other reasons too why a lot of people place (or used to place) the equipment rack in between the speakers-

1. Turntables have a nasty habit of spoiling the sound when placed in a corner behind the speakers (my understanding is that the build-up of bass creates some sort of mechanical disturbance) and are therefore placed away from corners.

2. Savings on speaker wire. Savings on interconnects too if everything is kept together (transports and amplifiers) which happens to be in center if you consider the above point.

3. Easier to use remote control (I use it frequently especially to control the volume.)

Presently my system too is kept on one side as I am using more and more of network server and very rarely do I use my turntable.

 

[sdurani]

Turntables have a nasty habit of spoiling the sound when placed in a corner behind the speakers (my understanding is that the build-up of bass creates some sort of mechanical disturbance) and are therefore placed away from corners.

Nothing mysterious about the "mechanical disturbance", it's just simple vibration (which makes it difficult for a turntable to play a record properly).

Bass vibrates things. It feels nice when it vibrates us. But causes problems when it vibrates a turntable.

Bass is louder at boundries and even louder where two boundries meet (corner). Placing a turntable right where bass is loudest in the room is asking for trouble.

 

[olly42]

Speaker positioning can become a nightmare specially if you live in an apartment and dont have many options to come anywhere close to recomended ideal pacements. My hall is 11' X 14', my speakers are 12' apart, and my seating position is 9' with a sold wall behind. I dont have an option to leave more than 1' from the wall for the left speaker and have 3' for the right one with less than 1' in front from the front wall. Fortunately I dont have any booming effect and have not done any accoustic room treatment. I do toe in the speakers from time to time for a change. So its all about trying everything possible till you are satisfied with the SQ....Hope this helps

 

[vnmathur57]

Gentlemen, I wonder whether it is the right thread but am sure to get some help here after going through a frustrating evening yesterday. My floorstanders have conical screwed-on pins as legs. While shifting the speakers for floor cleaning, toe-ins etc, I sometime find the legs unbalanced. It takes lot of time, me lying on the floor, to adjust the screws. It is a 45 years old house and maybe the floor is not that much even as modern days tiled ones. So I was thinking some of the following solutions :
1) Remove the legs, put the speakers on a wad of newspapers.
2) Remove the legs,put it on low stool and balance the stool for once.
3) Place with legs on the low stool.
It might be a very basic problem but a great moodspoiler, hence request some suggestions. Thanks.

 

[trittya]

Have a go at this, fun sake if nothing else . . .
http://www.hifivision.com/diy/20861-wilson-speaker-placement-know-how.html

HTH
Regards

 

[SToRMBRiNGeR68]

On another note, a lot of us place our rack in between the speakers as we love to sit back and admire or rigs while they play. I thought I'll try something different on this front. Taking a constant look at the rack tends to keep one distracted (worrying about settings, etc) and one cannot really enjoy the music. I noticed that I enjoyed the music much better when the rack was not in sight hyeah:

There are easier ways. Cover your eyes with a piece of cloth, or even easier, close your eyes and just listen to the music.

Many, including me, keep the rack at a corner behind the speakers (provided you have no subwoofers) and that works just fine. The rack affects the soundstage only when kept between the speakers on the same plane. If your speakers are standing a few feet away from the walls, that is how they should be, keeping the rack close to the wall even between the speakers will be okay.

Just my 2 cents, please.

cheers.
murali
[/QUOTE]
Close your eyes is the best way to listen I agree with you 100%