Speaker Placement and Toe-In


I just spent hours moving my Sopra 2’s with them sitting on the Townshend’s podiums #3. I kept intense measurements. My speakers are 115" from the woofer center to the other speaker woofer. I am sitting at that same distance from the L&R speakers’ middle centerline. They are 37" from the sidewalls to the sidewalls of the speaker.

I used one of those air bladder wedges that are used for lifting car doors and lifted each leg individually of the Townshend podium just enough to slide a furniture mover/disc under each leg.

What I found is that I prefer no Toe-In. That is, I prefer the speakers straight out into the room.

At least at this moment I am content.

ozzy

ozzy

Showing 3 responses by gladmo

Out of curiosity, I just measured my loudspeaker vs listening position and, coincidentally, found it is exactly the same ratio as the OP. It happens to be precisely 1:1 --> the distance between woofer centers and the distance from the drivers’ centerline to listening position. This ratio wasn’t intentional as I hadn’t measured it in that way recently, I was only using preferred positioning based on listening tests.

My toe-in is also the same: none. Speakers disappear with zero toe-in and imaging is optimal, and as toe-in degree increases, even a little bit, their location is more revealed. Center image with my speakers isn’t terribly disrupted by toe-in, but it does compress and overall breadth shrinks.

I'm using Townshend Seismic Bars, and thankfully their felt bottoms are super easy to slide around on my hardwood floor.

@ghdprentice For what it's worth to you, the arrangements of the OP and my own speakers relative to the listening position isn't actually an equilateral triangle.  If it were, the measurement from listening position to the perpendicular line between speaker midpoints would be 86.6% of the distance between speaker midpoints. In both of our cases, it was 100%.  Fascinatingly coincidental.

My soundstage is always naturally to the left because of room shape, but my amp has gain trim controls for both channels, so I just trim the left channel more to get it centered.  Maybe your preamp has a pan L/R knob?