Speaker Placement

Great idea Redkiwi, I've been experimenting with this for years. I currently own Thiel 3.6's. I have tried the Cardas rule but just usually experiment to dial in because my room is a little odd. It's a partially finished basement and measures 14.5W by 45L by 8H. My front wall is approx. 6 ft wide with 2 cavities on either side approx 5ft and 3 ft wide. My son's closet is on the other side and makes this identation into the room. It would be hard to dial in a rear firing speaker. Right now I have the speakers 48" off the front wall about 8.5ft apart which leaves my around 4 and 3 ft from side walls. I sit about 9 ft in front. Thiels have a wide dispersion so I don't usually toe-in although I play around with this it seems all the time - I can never be completely satisfied. I use a wool horse banket on the wall between the speakers and 2 on the side for damping, this seems to help imaging. Other than that damping material like foam seems to deaden the sound too much. My ceiling is unfinished - wood joists above me - don't know if this is good or bad or indifferent. Maybe defraction. Let me finish with a horror story, if you're quezy at all do not read on. Just yesterday I was fooling around and accidentally knocked over a sheet of drywall that was leaning up against an unfinished frame(STUPID IDIOT!) It fell into my speaker, tipped it over(GULP) it landed on my amp, fortunately on the face plate of my Classe, knocked the amp off the stand on its side, the speaker then rolled to a stop. Put a half inch gouge in the top right on the corner of the speaker (LOOKS REAL NICE). The place looked like a crime scene, cables everywhere - man. Well everything works or I would have crawled up on the roof to jump. Ever see the movie Jaws and Quin said the scariest moment of his life was waiting his turn to be pulled from the shark infested water, well mine was booting up waiting for the tubes to come on in the preamp to see if I could still produce music!

Nice post Rekiwi, so far your answer is the best to your own question. Real good points, I tend to agree in that there are so many variables that I can't imagine a formula giving an end result. Room shape, room contents, types of walls, ceilings, floors and speaker design concept should give the experienced audionut a starting point. My personal philosophy is start speakers as far apart and as far from all walls as possible with 10 ft left between sitting position and speakers. Not easy if you don't have a large room. Then about 3 inches of movement and listen - it can be painstaking. I also believe some toe in is almost always required on most designs to put some additional solid body on image outlines. Otherwise, you have wide a soundstage with less specificity of singers, instruments, etc. Also on my system I lose a little of the transparency without toe in, ie, I can locate sound coming from the speakers rather than behind the plane. A good test is a CD or LP with background singers to really judge where in the soundstage you want them and how far forward or back, also bunched together or more spread out. Toe-in usually affects that. Also, good point about distance of your chair, the further back the more room interaction, closer and it can sound like your on the front row at a rock show. But the big rule of thumb for me is use 2 or 3 sources of music, find your optimal position and then don't move em anymore. Some music is in phase some isn't, even on the same CD and you will gain or loss the perceived magic you just spent all of your hard work on with different sources. And finally, it's all about personal preference. Unfortunately some people can never be satisfied and get swept away into the music - always looking for something. And it may not be there!