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A master class in speaker placement


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Some good points made, but some missed that are equally important, and depending on your room, just as important as spacing.

 

First is if owning stand mounted speakers, height will reflect [pardon the pun] the floor boundary effect.....that's not mentioned at all.

 

The second is also regarding the use of stand mounted speakers and their mass.......they really didn't come into the main stream until the early 80's with the likes of the Celestion SL6, and other bookshelf sized speakers that tried to get a quart out of a pint bottle, the way to get bass out of these very small footprint speakers was to place them on heavy mass stands, this has the effect of using the speakers cabinet vibrations to travel into the speaker stand and send it into the floor, where it reacts with the room modes.....sort of like a passive 'Loudness button', it's not TRUE bass as reproduced by the speaker, it's just a interaction between the Speaker/stand and floor that excites what ever room mode it is closest too.

 

Using light speaker stands, or decouplers between speakers and stands rid much of such interaction, which in turn allows you to find the speaker position sweet spot a lot better, than if using heavy mass stands.

 

Regarding getting Stereo imaging correct.

You can use XTC Skylarking album, Track One, Summers Cauldron....42 seconds in you will hear a FLY start coming towards you from the right of center, then come nearer and zig across to the left, then come nearer still and across to your right again to eventually fly off behind your right ear, heading left...this whole effect takes but a second or two, but is wort it's weight in gold when positioning speakers, because when you get your speakers and seating correct, it is VERY realistic....it would have those who didn't know it was a recorded effect, going to swipe a invisible fly...try it.

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What helps in that room is that it’s practically a dead space, there’s no reverb in there at all (well feck all). That has other issues, but nothing like a reverb one would be. 

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A good 6 hours later and my toils have yielded a definite improvement, tighter and more precise bass and imaging seemed a lot more defined than I have heard it previously.

I think I have tested out every plausible speaker placement option within the room and also some that were never going to work but what the heck.


I also finally mounted spikes to the speakers (massive improvement) I then tried sitting them on top of some stone pavers (massive fail :lol:).

The end result of today's efforts and the new best seat in the house:

DSC_0261.thumb.JPG.cc1cf110252d9dce579eab4706f99c53.JPG

I listened to all types of music throughout, but the main test track I used repeatedly to compare changes was this:
 



 

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1 minute ago, Sime said:

@Teksiis so how does it go with another song? Seriously 

:lol: 

Listening to some Xavier Rudd now, and rather well.  :thumb:

I figured I would use something with nice consistent bass throughout and a track that I know really well.  

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@Teksiis I’m listening to the Doctor? track now and for sure, I wouldn’t use that track for speaker placement. On my system that tracks imaging is very limited. It hasn’t got an open sound to it, it’s one of the more mono like stereo tracks I’ve heard. 

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@Sime Odd maybe something is being lost in the youtube version I linked, there is a constant left to right sweep throughout the track and a heck of a lot of play back and forth with the intermittent melody sections that come in and out over the course of it.  

All of that aside it was primarily used to sort out the bass side of things, which seemed to change most significantly with each new position I tried.  There was a very.....very wide scope of music used throughout the process to access all aspects.    

Edited by Teksiis
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@Teksiis I listened to it on Tidal, but a stereo left a right pan like they do in a lot of EDM tacks isn’t a good example of imaging, being a $10 system can replicate it. 

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well i ended up with some adjustments and made a big improvement - honestly was great to get some additional tips from this video

 

And yes I used Kraftwerk's " Model" and Norah Jones "Little Room"  happened to own both.

 

Also used Ed Sheeran's "Perfect Symphony" with Andrea Bocelli.

 

Am happy with results

IMG_0020.JPG

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Well it sounds like I'm was influence to tweak about a bit to after seeing the video. It's free to try anyway right :D

I moved the lounge back a bit, but I can't get 1/5 from the back wall because of a staircase is in the way. Moved the speakers a little more into the room with the front face close to 1/5th, need to keep space to the dog to get about. Then was the toe in, oh man this has bugged me so much. One day it sees right, then next day it doesn't. The voice is in the center but the sound stage seems smaller and vice versa. 

 

Someone posted that a good starting point for toe in was a 1m behind the listener is where they should intersect. I broke out the string and blu-tack and started shifting the speakers and testing with Nora Jones track for center and Kayne's Clique for width, Ian Ewing's Ice Creams is another good one. That was pretty spot on, I even got the wife to sit down and point out where she heard instruments in Diana Krall's No Moon At All. She was a good second opinion so I think I'm good on the toe in. My ELAC's might not have super defined center like my Dads speakers, but inversely his seem a bit limited in sound stage width. 

 

It's nice to get a positive result and not just tweaking for tweakings sake... at least for the moment :P

Edited by PauliD
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