Perfect Speaker Placement - Put next to the back wall as much as possible.
I would say this type of setup is for studio control rooms. You would be surprised how much acoustic treatment is in the walls and ceiling that may not be visible to the eye. I have some experience with this. https://www.gossardstudios.com/ |
Audio2design, you are ruining everyone's mythology! The rules of acoustics do not change for someone's convenience, but there are practicalities in the home environment that prevent optimal positioning of speakers. In the studio you can construct a wall specifically designed and angled for speakers so they can be flush. In a home the walls being at best 6 inches thick will not house an entire speaker and the wall is most likely flat pointing the speaker past the optimum 16 inches behind your head. Many speakers such as Wilsons are not flat. Then there are the types of speakers that are used at home that are totally inappropriate for flush mounting such as dipoles of various sorts. Paul Klipsch was very clever back in the day. His speakers were designed to be in corners and right up against the wall. They were so efficient that the flea watt amps of the period could drive them to thunderous levels. They remain popular to this day! Using the short wall I would think would be obvious by now. Keeping the subwoofer drivers as close to the wall as possible is extremely important if you do not want huge variations in bass response throughout the room. Even with a swarm system the drivers should be against a wall for efficiency reasons. Using speakers that are directional in some way can help quite a bit. Dipoles and horns are good examples. They limit reflections reducing interference effects. My personal favorite is the line source dipole which dramatically reduces reflections the only caveats being that you have to deaden the wall behind the speaker and shift to subwoofers at some point. Even so you do not want to keep the speaker far from the wall. 3 feet is the maximum. Assuming you are using subwoofers and high pass filters you can keep the inside edges almost touching the wall. Big speakers like Sound Labs become the wall. The rules become more important for standard dynamic speakers as they are much less directional. Keeping them close to the wall deadening the first reflection points works best. As always shifting to subwoofers helps to manage the bass. If you really want to optimize your situation you have to impulse test your room with a calibrated mike. Then you can see the frequency response of your system nicely graphed out. There are many brands available. But then you have to be able to do something about it and that is where room control comes in. If you purchase a DEQX Premate you get the microphone and the works. You can equalize the system digitally so the response is perfectly flat at the listening position and then you can tailor the response however you like. There are other brands available such as Anthem, Trinnov and now Mcintosh makes a unit. IMHO Trinnov is the best followed by DEQX which is the best value. Computer based systems are difficult to coordinate if you use more than two channels such as with subwoofers where you are using 4 channels. This article is a great starting point. It covers the basic concepts and gives you a good idea what you are dealing with even if we do not have studio mixing rooms in our houses. Everybody has their own situation and different solution may be required. What I can say for sure is that you will have a more enjoyable system if you start from a flat frequency response. It is absolutely the best reference point. If you do not know where you are starting, you can't possibly know were you are going to wind up. I have tested some very large SOTA systems and seen some very wild frequency response curves. |
The usage is different, but acoustics does not magically change, and goals acoustically need to be similar.Control room acoustics are nothing like home. Walls, floors, trapping, etc. vary massively from studio to studio. Large control rooms may have 15 to 30 x 3 to 5 feet of glass, often with an angle or two. Ceilings may be 12 feet or higher. There are often racks of equipment with metal face plates behind and/or to the side of the engineers position [EP]. There is a large flat, metal sheet extending 3 to 6 feet either side of the EP. There is a flat meter bridge extending the same distance about 3 feet in front of the EP. Add in musicians, artists, A&R & record co. execs and it's not at all similar. Monitors require several multiples the power at 3-4m as at 1m away markedly increasing distortion. Reflections from the back of the console markedly change the tonal balance. Engineers have dozens of tools to master. Near field monitors are but one. |
Control room acoustics are nothing like home.Acoustic law dont change but they cannot be applied with blinders... No small room is the same, and a small room has not the same geometry, the same topology and the same acoustical content than a larger living room... The acoustic law dont change, for example the ratio 62 to 38 is the Golden section...This is universal from molecules to galaxies and in between corresponding to the optimal distribution of branches all along a tree trunk...But even this ratio cannot be blindly put in action without taking into account anything else...(in my square small room this ratio work) But a Greek remarkable open amphitheater acoustic is not a closed church acoustic, same laws applied and some other laws linked to the existence of walls and ceilings, same laws but with new one and with great variations and modifications and adaptations.. In fact except some very universal laws about ratio or some reflective principle and absorbing pattern and materials functions and diffusion law in relation with geometrical patterns etc, no room ask for exactly the same treatment and controls... Any acoustician use his ears not only an equation...Otherwise for example: how to adapt some surface or correcting some diffusive 3-d patterns to the disparate acoustical properties of the different materials in use to construct some room and building and how about the diffrent acoustic properties of the materials and fabric of the furniture? Geometry, topology and acoustical content of materials in the room are NEVER the same for ANY room compare to others... All object in a room impact the perception of sound.... Even small one....And dont laugh some may hear that if not you.... Anyway acoustic said so, not me....And i verified some of that in the last 2 years... In the same way they are general rules for each kind of speakers, but none of them can be used in exactly the same way, locations, distance, if the geometry, the topology(how many windows and doors) and the acoustical content is different for each room where they will put into work... In acoustic no one can economize or dispense with working ears.... |
"...Your Maggies and Martin Logan’s may not work as noted, that article was not targeting this type of speaker. However your Triangles, with the proper acoustic treatment would. Just because a speakers name is Triangle does not change the physics of acoustics..." The answer is; No they wouldn’t. None of my Triangle loudspeakers worked placed near the front wall even with acoustic treatments. It would have been nice if they did because they ended well out into the room. You may not be aware that some Triangle loudspeakers have rear firing drivers so a blanket statement that all Triangle loudspeakers would work on the wall (near the wall) may mislead some people. Triangle says; " a position far from the back wall reproduces a wide and deep sound image." ...and indeed it does. |
The usage is different, but acoustics does not magically change, and goals acoustically need to be similar.Control room acoustics are nothing like home. The article was not about professional control rooms. Did you read the article? It was talking about setting up a mixing studio. I can only expect that most people who are posting here didn't take the time to read the articles in any depth and / or are commenting without understanding the articles. They are practically how to articles on either speaker placement close to a wall and also far from a wall and whether near field, small speaker or large speaker does not matter. The methodologies and same decision making process must still be applied for optimum results. |
Did you read the article?Yes. Any many similar over the years. It was talking about setting up a mixing studio." Start by facing the short wall of your room" is a non-starter. Many ’mixing studios’ I worked in and my company wired had the desk facing the long wall. SOP for an engineer who works in rooms from a London scoring stage to some artist’s ’mix room’ is to take your speakers (& amps, cables, level control for the truly twisted) along with some music you know and set up your speakers at the best location for that room. The article is a crock for kiddies with a laptop. |
I read an article on the net some months ago about acoustics of small room.... The article is no more there where i read it... It was a discussion with 4 great well known acousticians, they speak politely, were in accord about many things but surprizingly used very different approach to similar problems and seems to disagree at some point... I was amazed and conforted in my improvised ears listenings experiments at the times creating my own controls devices for my room... Acoustic is a practical art, ears are needed, and any small room is a unique problem that cannot be OPTIMALLY solved most of the times by simple rule... The proof that it is so, was for me this disagrement between these specialists very palpable in the discussion... Alas! the article is nowhere to be found and i dont remember the names... I remember only that it was a discussion at McGill university ... «A Bird's nest is not a man's house»-Anonymus Smith |
In a perfect world your room dimensions would be 14.5 X 23.5 X 9'. That gets you the Golden Ratio in all 3 dimensions, and a good starting point. Unless you use the Bolt method, in which case it's off the chart. Go figure. Literally. You still need to calculate and deal with the eigenmodes in those 3 dimensions plus axial, tangential, and oblique. Like this: https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc |
The only way to solve the problem is like this.I own 7 headphones, 2 stax electroacoustic, 2 magneplanars. 2 dynamic one, one hybrid... I dont listen to them for the last months anymore, my speakers wre not in their level class few months ago... But now rightfully embed my speakers make them not interesting, not natural, each one headphone has his own peculiar limitation...Compared to them my speakers has not these limitations anymore... Happy New Year... |
If all of you were in the same room conversing face to face, would you be speaking to each other the way you are writing to each other from afar? Obviously, I am not referring to everyone who is posting on this thread. Most of the people on these forums know how to disagree but still be civil to one another. |
About a foot maybe a few inches more from front wall with speaker toe in whereas I can barely still see inside surface/side of speaker. My seat is equidistant to the distance separating speakers. Tweeters at ear height etc.. This has always been I tried and true method, at least for me. No science involved 😁 |
