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Listening position/speaker position

I had a friend visit this weekend for some extended listening. I generally trust some of his suggestions, and his hearing may be better than mine, but I am 61 and don't have any hearing "issues." Also, in the interest of full disclosure, my friend and I are competitive with each other so there is always the possibility that he is busting on me.

 

I am very happy with my setup and my sound----the room is quiet, the system is quiet and I have low distortion, plenty of punch and volume, without sacrificing any detail. I have Revel 228be speakers, a McIntosh MC312 amp, C53 preamp, Pass XP-17 phono stage, Technics SL1200G TT run with an AT-art9xi MCC.

 

Anyway, my listening room is approximately 26' x 15' with less than 8-foot ceilings, plaster walls, wall to wall carpeting, lots of cushy furniture, and it's perfectly rectangular. I have my Revel 228's positioned on the narrow end of the room, a couple feet from the side wall and about 2-1/2 feet from the back wall. The listening position is about 10 feet from the speakers, or just shy of the midpoint of the room. My critical friend was suggesting that by having the speakers at one end of the room, I am asking them to "fill" a 26-foot room, despite the listening position being near midpoint depth. He suggested that I put the speakers in the middle of the room and move the listening position against the wall, so that the speakers are only tasked with filling half of the room. He also implied that I was under-powered with the MC312 which doesn't sound valid..

 

Obviously, the only way to know if I would get sound improvement would be to swap sides in the room, but his suggestion sounded so odd that I thought some of you with more experience might have an opinion.

willyht
garthb309
48 posts
 

Easy, google “Cardas speaker placement” for the formula-works great!

audioguy85's avatar
audioguy85
1,994 posts
 

Unless your speakers are 10 feet apart, which would not be recomended, why are you sitting 10 feet away? I would think your seated position would/should be equidistant to the distance between each speaker, the equilateral triangle. You are listening too far away in my opinion. Speakers generally are placed about 7 to 7.5 feet apart. Any further than that and the stereo effect is diminished and it’s hard to achieve a good central image. I guess there may be some exceptions to this, but this is what I’ve done my entire time in hifi. There are also two general rules of thought concerning the toe-in. Some suggest the left/right channels converge just in front of your head/ears, some say just behind your head/ears. 

 

baylinor's avatar
baylinor
1,210 posts
 

@willyht 

With all due respect, your friend is an idiot, or at the very least knows nothing about room acoustics. You are doing it right, I would just move the speakers a little further from the front wall, like close to 5ft. As far as the listening position, the space between the tweeters should be a little more than 80% of the distance between them and you. It does sound like you need some diffusion with all the carpeting and cushy furniture you describe. Try it at first reflection points first. It will brighten up the sound considerably.

 

 

 

boxcarman
317 posts
 

I also had a friend who is in the stereo retail business come by to listen to my system [Maggie 3.7's, Hegel int.]  After 10 minutes he said 'try this for a while'' and moved the speakers another 20 inches apart.  I left them there for a week and then moved them back.  Experimentation allows learning is what I found.

z32kerber
143 posts
 

My room is nearly the same exact size as yours. I am limited regarding speaker and listening position but I’ve played around with these and my speakers are about 3’ from the wall, 7’ apart with the listening position about 7’ from the speakers (an equilateral triangle). I have room treatments that tamed bass. The sound it very good and still gives me goose bumps from time to time. 

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