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Speakers too wide apart?

Today on a whim I decided to move my speakers closer together. Originally they were 7ft apart. After the move, they are now 5.5ft apart. I sit about 7.5ft away. I was immediately floored by how much better my system sounded. There was a naturalness that I never heard before. Soundstage depth also increased dramatically (which may not be saying much since before I had zero depth). Most impressive was how much more holograpic the music is. This simple adjustment had an incredibly profound affect on my system. As others have pointed out on many occasion here on this forum, it pays to experiment with speaker positioning. In my case, I highly recommend adjusting speaker width.
tboooe

Showing 2 responses by jkalman

jkalman
298 posts
 
Tboooe, there is one school of speaker placement, though obscure in high end, that places the speakers almost right next to each other and then places a sound absorbing material directly between the two speakers and extends that barrier almost all the way to the listening position.

I read about it in David Moulton's book, "Total Recording." I've never tried it out personally...
jkalman
298 posts
 
What you have done by placing the speakers further from side walls is to cut down on early reflections form the mid and treble - it allows your brain to process the primary signal before the reflections arrive - you hear more detail rather than a cluttered claustrophobic sound

He is also decreasing bass loading as well. If they were too close to the walls before, he was likely overloading the bass and getting heavy resonance in certain frequencies. This would muddy up the imaging, making it harder to hear some of the other frequencies and consequently affect the precision of localization. A person can correct for the reflection issues that close wall placement causes fairly easily with good absorption material, but you can't easily deal with the bass loading problem...

Also, he might have been suffering from imaging of instruments and vocals that are out of proportion if the speakers were too far apart.
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