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

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. 

Not to hijack Willht thread, but I need some advice as well. I see all of the recommendations, and they are for box speakers. My question is how do these change (if at all) for open baffle speakers? I am finishing a listening room that will be 20L x 15W x 8H, and will mostly be using Clayton Shaw Caladan speakers.....not too far off of the Cardas recommendations, but this is as close as I can get.

++ for recommendations of Jim Smith's book; "Get Better Sound"  even better yet call Jim!  For a modest amount he will spend 30min with you.  You send him dimensions, pictures and a list of your equipment and he'll offer up his expertise on optimization.

Straight talk with Jim

Either your friend is none too bright when it comes to speaker placement or he is pulling your leg. Take your pick. Good advice above - I don't need to repeat.

However, your comment about having lots of cushy furniture is something I can identify with. I have a room a little bigger than yours and I have lots of furniture in the room including book cases, CD cases, chair, couch, desk, and other stuff but no room treatment. The room is somewhat live and it sounds really good. Punchy and dynamic with excellent imaging.

I realize that this doesn't exactly relate to your question but one of the best tools/skills you can use is the slap echo test. Clap your hands and listen for the echo and decay. Do this around your room and then try it in different rooms in your house. As you gain experience you can use this test to get a good feel for how a room sounds. If the sound you hear is a clearly defined echo with a fairly long decay then that indicates you will have a problem. If the sound is dead without hardly any decay, your system will sound lifeless. You want to hear a smooth decay without a clear slap echo. Once you get proficient with this go over to your buddy's house, clap your hands while moving about the room, and then tell him to move his listening chair 2" one direction, his rug 6" in another direction, and change the toe in by 8 degrees. 😁

My point here is that if you start moving stuff around or adding or deleting furniture there is a simple way to get a sense of what is going on with the room. It won't tell you where the bass nodes are but it's a good tool for managing absorption and diffusion. When you hear a different system it can also provide good information about why it sounds the way it does.

If you go on the Cardas site you can plug in your room width and it will give you the exact position from the front wall and the side wall to put your speakers I did that and the sound stage just opened up beautifully.