Vertical position of speakers

[Fiftyfifty]

Hi,

There is much material on placement of speakers in the horizontal plane in a room - ratios, measurements, and so on. Yesterday, quite by accident, I realised that vertical placement of speakers, particularly stand-mounts, is equally significant - distance from the floor/ceiling, relationship with horizontal placement - every inch of movement up or down appears to make a difference. Manufacturers of floor standers probably build in this variable into the design. For stand mounts too, there is the manufacturer's recommendation. But each room is different. The golden rule of placing the tweeters at ear height is not entirely valid.

What has been your personal experience with speaker position on the vertical axis? Have you tried different positions? Do you hear, like I do, differences in soundstage, focus and tone?

Please share your views.

Cheers!

@Nikhil @prem Any comments?

 

[MaSh]

I like my speakers's tweeter above ear level. About a foot above.

MaSh

 

[prem]

I pay more attention to how the bass behaves. Usually the bass interacts with the floor or the corner walls. So depending on the design I usually stick to the manufacturers reco. I don’t pay much attention to tweeter height.

 

[mpw]

My speaker manual came with a suggestion that the listening position to be midway between the midbass and the tweeter..

I got a rocking chair made so when i sit on it - my ears are approximately there..

regards

 

[bornfi]

As rightly indicated by @mpw, you can do this as follows. Play music, go closer to your speaker with one ear towards it, move your head right-left and up-down to locate throat of the speaker. The throat is where you feel that sound is emanating from one point. That is the the position you would want your ears to be when sitting on listening chair.

 

[Fiftyfifty]

As rightly indicated by @mpw, you can do this as follows. Play music, go closer to your speaker with one ear towards it, move your head right-left and up-down to locate throat of the speaker. The throat is where you feel that sound is emanating from one point. That is the the position you would want your ears to be when sitting on listening chair.

Thanks. So what is the height in your case and what spakers do you use? Do you find that placement in the vertical plane makes as much difference as in the horizontal plane?

 

[bornfi]

Thanks. So what is the height in your case and what spakers do you use? Do you find that placement in the vertical plane makes as much difference as in the horizontal plane?

Mine is Tekton Design's Double Impacts. Yes, vertical placement is as important as horizontal, if not more. I like to keep it simple because though I have 100% faith on this subject but I also see this as a trap in the sense wherein one might get into an endless search of truth .

For me, at my listening position, my ears are at the level of that group of 7 tweeters of Double Impacts.

 

[mpw]

@Fiftyfifty

i, for one, would like to see you post a video of you placing your ear near to the speakers and moving your head left and right and up and down..

repeat for the other speaker please

 

[Nikhil]

What has been your personal experience with speaker position on the vertical axis? Have you tried different positions? Do you hear, like I do, differences in soundstage, focus and tone?

Absolutely. Keeping the tweeter at ear level can only be taken as a general guideline.
Even with floor standers I have seen changes in sound by raising them on platforms by a few inches.

I do have to qualify that there are variations in driver configurations and arrangements.
Each arrangement (MTM, TMM, etc) has it's own "acoustic center" and interacts with the room differently.
The interaction with the floor and ceiling is easy to hear when you move a speaker vertically.

Another variation is tilting the speaker upwards ...



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