Speaker Placement

Check the Cardas site for some really good input on this topic. Good Listening.

The best placement aid I have discovered is a bottle of good chardonnay. Seriously, it does require a great deal of patience. The obvious, but often overlooked place to start is with a live, unamplified concert. But once the placement process begins, resist the temptation to move them again after an improvement. Live with it for a while. And mark their location before further experimentation. Also, I read somewhere that in general, folks place speakers too close together, and with too much toe in, and suspect this to be true.

I've just finished a quick positioning of a pair of Matin-Logan reQuests, and my findings are very similar to Abstract's. I just took a tape measure down, out of interest. Speakers are 9' apart to centers. They are position 3' 2" from back wall.

Based on a couple of excellent posts (thanks!) I'm going to be doing some fine-tuning.

Not sure if I will be allowed to apply Cardas rule - its a large room and they would be 12' from the front wall. But I' definitely going to try it.

Soundlab speakers produce nearly as much output from the rear as the front, making the distance from the back wall far more critical than the sides. The distance from the rear wall is determined by a number of factors, including toe in, wall treatments, and ceiling height. I keep my U-1's about 5 feet from the rear wall, even with RPG panels and Tube Traps in place. The single most important and overlooked adjustment on Soundlabs is the vertical alignment. From the factory, they tend to lean backwards (especially the U-1). This destroys the focus of the high frequencies, sending the highs well above the normal listening height. This effects not only tonal balance, depth and soundstage, but the voice and instrument imaging as well. With the original factory feet, the U-1 is out of plumb nearly two and a fourth inches. Floor level must be considered at this point as well, an out of plumb floor by only one fourth of an inch, when multiplied out to the top of a seven foot speaker, produces huge errors. After the vertical is right, it is fairly painless to set the toe in. Simply sight thorough the speaker from the rear, aiming for the center listening position. Use the fourth cell, counting from the wall side of the frame. Sight with a horizontal rib that closely matches your head height in the listening chair. More than half the time, this gets the toe in dead on, leaving only the wall distance as a final tweak.

Redkiwi, great thread. You beat me to the punch... I am interested in the responses from esl owners as I am now mating my *new* Kinergetics SW800 subs with my ML CLS1's.

I had the CLS's 5' from the front wall, 9' apart (center panel to center panel) with 4" toe in, 5' from the side walls and 10' to where my ass resides.

With the subs I have moved the CLS's in to a position that is 8'4" center panel to center panel. Everything else is the same except toe in is 3.5". SW800's (five 10" drivers in each 58" tall enclosure) are 1.5" from the outside of each CLS and aimed in exactly the same direction as the CLS's.

It's been one week so this is only a starting point.

CLS people (and other esl folks) ... what say you????