I obsessed for years over speaker placement, room interactions, treatments, this with both open baffle and box/ported speakers. And yes, this obsession paid off handsomely.
And then a few years ago, some Klipschorns fell into my hands, expecting the worst, corner placement required, huge wide baffles. And what do you know, wonderful sound staging and imaging right off the bat, nearly as good as my extremely carefully placed Merlin VSM-MM, a sound stage, imaging champ. Guess this points out meticulous attention required for some speakers, much less so for others.
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@wolf_garcia Best post. People make things so needlessly complicated.
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I’ll also add Nola and Spatial Audio as a couple other speakers that excel at 3D imaging and soundstage.
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No, I'm very happy with the way things are. I like the more "distant" perspective: front of the soundstage at or behind the plane of the drivers, and good depth to the soundstage. For orchestral music, this approximates to a concert hall perspective, especially if you aren't in rows A, B or C.
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This is a great thread. I'm also working on my room with my KEF LS50 Metas combined with a KEF KC62. I have a 15x17ft room with a 9ft ceiling. The challenge is the left side of my loft opens up to a stairwell so overall the room width is technically 23' wide but the half height pony wall limits the speaker placement width to 15'. I'm still playing with the placement but currently the front of the speaker are 35" from the back wall. Still more experimenting to come. My wife always ask me about the blue tape on the floor :)
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As a long time professional musician and live sound engineer I’m nothing if not meticulous about the tonal aspects of my system, including soundstaging, bass response and any other speaker placement issues. The main listening room treatment is accomplished by having furniture, rugs, book cases, a couple of plants, an 18’ ceiling, a gigantic stone fireplace along a wall, euro style tall windows, a loft, my hair, a 50’s Les Paul Standard in a corner, a small model of the Les Paul on a table because I’m cheezy, etc. Heresy IIIs and 2 REL subs (vintage at this point but carefully adjusted). What does it sound like? I recently added a Pas XA-25 so I’m still astonished by that thing, but what I can say is it’s indescribable. I recently changed the toe-in angle to widen the soundstage a little. I’m meticulous. To achieve this level of sonic wonderfulness you just have to exactly replicate all of my stuff and borrow my ears. That's not going to be easy.
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@sns Agree, especially when considering a tried and true design like the Cornwalls which are meant to be positioned in the corners. When you say meticulous attention, it sure does vary by speaker. Some speakers have incredibly small sweet spots, but getting them right pays off handsomely, and other speakers may have larger sweet spots, but they compromise overall dimensionality. And then there are the speakers that can have a large sweet spot and image very holographically, and those are very special.
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@wolf_garcia
Do people really need this much coaching when it simply should be: Move your speakers around until they sound good to you. The end.
First, respect to you and your experience. I have benefited from many of your comments and you’ve posted helpful advice to questions I’ve asked, as well.
Regarding your comment, here, well, all I can say is that there are others with similar levels of experience as yours who do measure, tinker, adjust, and treat rooms. It would seem they're all wasting their time.
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@blisshifi, my impression is that soundstage depth can either be dominated by the room or by the recording, the latter being preferable but generally more difficult to accomplish.
First looking at the room as the constraining factor: As a ballpark first approximation, it seems to me that soundstage depth is related to the distance from the speakers to the wall (or equipment rack, or TV, or whatever) that is behind and/or in between them. My untested observation is that soundstage depth often seems constrained to twice the distance to the reflective surface between and behind the speakers. So if the speakers are out three feet from the wall, it seems to me that soundstage depth tends to extend to about six feet - which is cool because it is perceived as extending beyond the physical room boundaries, but imo there is significant room for improvement.
Diffusing, re-directing, or broadband-absorbing the first reflections off the wall behind the speakers (and avoiding having the equipment rack or TV there) can help to "unmask" the soundstage depth cues which are already on the recording.
Also, well set-up (i.e. far enough out into the room) bi-directional speakers like the Borresens/Raidhos, Quads, and Maggies you mentioned, have reflection characteristics which can be exploited to shift the perceived acoustic space from "playback room" to "recording venue", whether the recording venue cues be real or engineered or both.
Duke
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How the speaker images should be entirely up to the recording. This assumes that the equipment is up to the task and set up correctly. If a system images the same way regardless of the program source it is either not up to the task, is not set up correctly or both.
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I shall throw another hand grenade while I am at it. Painfully few of us have ever heard a system that images correctly. I think many systems are capable of a satisfactory image but are not optimized to perform at that level do to problems inherent with speakers and room issues.
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@audiokinesis Your post is thoughtful, and I appreciate that you have not (yet) redirected the conversation in any way to focus on how the role of subs can manipulate the stage (for better or worse), yet of course that is a whole other direction for discussion. I for one would certainly enjoy learning about tested observations / white paper between speaker depth and stage depth, but I agree largely with what you say, as long as a speaker can actually image well. And for sure, managing the reflections and reverberations are as important as the positioning itself.
@mijostyn Both great points, self-awareness and humility go a long way here.
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@blisshifi , if we can trick the ear into accepting the spatial cues on the recording as being the more plausible "package" of cues, rather than the spatial cues inherent to the playback room, we can achieve that elusive "you are there" experience (assuming a good recording). As long as the playback room’s acoustics are perceptually dominant, we are limited to a "they are here" presentation, which admittedly can be quite enjoyable, but "you are there" can be memorable. How to implement this concept of course depends on the system specifics, but I wanted to emphasize that "recording cues dominate" is a different paradigm from "playback room cues dominate".
And of course all of this is assuming the speakers can actually image well to begin with.
Duke
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As an electrical engineer/director and also an active gigging musician I'm like @wolf_garcia. Too myopic for my own good. :) My listening space is dominated by a tape measure and blue tape on the floor combined with saxophones on stands around the room.. End of the day I'm really not convinced that if I move my speakers four more inches into the room that I really can even hear a difference. All that happens is when my wife comes up stairs to dance along with Just Dance on the Nintendo Switch she just comments that the speakers are in the way :)
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The golden ratio is significant for the visual art but, imho, not so much for the speaker placement due to the complex interaction between the speakers and the room, room setup and the horizontal dispersion pattern of the speaker drivers especially tweeters. Rather, there is a more flexible tool called LOTS (Loudspeaker Optimization Techniques for Soundstage) introduced by Ron of New Record Day. In my room where the width (W) is 14 ft and the depth (L) is 18 ft, the golden ratio triangle is a special case of the LOTS positions. First, the speaker positions from the golden ratio triangle are within the LOTS tracks (see diagram) without exception (because 0.276W is between W/4 and W/3). Second, in this combination of W and L, the listening positions suggested by these two methods coincide.
Based on my experience, the most probable LOTS positions locate between the minimum distance of 3 ft to both the front / side walls and the vertices of the equilateral triangle. With that being said, you probably do not need to experiment all the way from the front wall to the L/3 position within the LOTS tracks as suggested by Ron. The min. distance of 3 ft is suggested by Tarun of A British Audiophile based on the theory that “any sound that hits your ears from the reflective surfaces that is not delayed by 5 millisecond is perceived as the direct sound.” The speed of sound at the sea level is approximately 1100 ft/sec and the half of the distance travelled in 5 millisecond is just under 3 ft.
So, using these empirical rules, I end up with the speaker positions just a bit wider than the LOTS tracks with slight toe-in. I felt, a bit wider separation between the speakers helps maximize the soundstage (SS) width. I also felt further separation from the front wall gives a bit better SS depth but 3 ft is maximal separation I could live with in my room. So I sacrifice a bit SS depth to make the room more functional for other purposes. Again, it is a trade-off I am willing to live with in my room.
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lanx0003-
Reality is if you don't have dedicated space-whatever sounds good to your ears.
Equal side/front wall distance introduce SQ concerns?
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Simple fact: All speakers have a different "in room" response. My issue is with the overcomplicating of setup os it chews the fun out of your gum (Richard Julian line). Get a pair of Magicos and maybe the shop will come over and set ’em up for you...maybe...I use horn drivers which can help with the dreaded "early reflection" issues, and 2 subs allow for control of standing waves. You don’t want those waves standing around. Also note that nobody knows your earballs, taste, and what your listening room sounds like, and don’t let any of us come over and hear it...we don’t want to see your crappy decorating taste or sit on your disgusting old furniture. I like the sound of a room as it’s where life occurs, and a couple of reverberant tones shouldn’t harsh your mellow...shouldn’t, but man, I bet it makes you want to throw your cable elevators at the cat.
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Bipole, dipoles, horns, dynamics, Omni, etc all have different radiation patterns, and that’s what mostly dictates proper in-room setups no one way or the highway. Best to understand how your loudspeaker radiates and interacts with room boundaries before setting them up.
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Not at all half the fun is getting the setup right. Not saying it has to be rocket surgery but some thought has to go into it.
Besides chewing gum is disgusting. IMHO.
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+1 @johnk Great point.
+1 @juanmanuelfangioii If we didn't feel both rewarded and frustrated through the process, we wouldn't feel so highly about the hobby overall. Sometimes enduring the frustration is what makes the rewarding moments even more fulfilling.
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@tablejockey
The issue with the golden ratio for which (I sense) you advocate is the extreme confinement of the space (disregard dedicated or not) down to almost near-field listening. Take my room as an example, with the golden ratio rule, the listener is literally 6 ft 3 inch away from the speakers in a 14’ x 18’ size room. Why do you want to confine your listening space down to a 6 ft equilateral triangle, equivalent to 7% of the 14’ x 18’ room space? I sit in the Ikea Pong chair with ottoman and my feet are half way to the speakers. That is insanely ridiculous. I do not enjoy. No one will. Not to mention the SS is not as good as the positions I end up with using LOTS. Have you ever tried yourself I wonder?
To answer your second question, the positions I end up with as shown gives me the widest SS and a bit less SS depth compared to 5 ft setback from the front wall. The center image is focused and instruments and vocal are well separated within the SS.
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Here is a post I made a couple years ago on the subject of speaker placement and how to do Master Set.
Audiogon Discussion Forum
I have been listening to music with speakers set this way since 2007. I wouldn't have it any other way.
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Dedicated room
Acoustic treatment
Setup
Get those done correctly and you'll have center image depth along with everything else to yield a 3-dimensional soundstage that is more dependent on recording quality than your gear.
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I check depth with Chesky Test CD Vol 1. I don’t want any "extra" depth where it doesn’t exist on a recording. Try Track 12.
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