How far apart do you position your speakers ?


Of course it depends, but in many cases I discovered that 1.5-2.0 heights of a speaker work best for floorstanding speakers in smaller and medium-sized rooms.
What is your experience?
inna

Showing 8 responses by wolf_garcia

So...I AM a bad person! Damn...I forgot to mention that the speakers sound great without pulling 'em out into the room. I just do it to remind myself of how wise and attentive I am, and that I can be as geeky as the next freak.
Since my speakers are light-ish skinny towers (Silverline Preludes), I move 'em out away from the back walls into a closer sweet spot when I feel like it, leaving my beloved old REL sub alone. I have the spot marked for returning them to "sweet spot #1". Does anybody else do this? Am I a bad person? Should I stop calling myself an audiophile?
If you move speakers away from walls, dampen surfaces, use tube traps or something in corners for standing wave issues, and have silent heating and/or cooling and no furniture, you can't live in my house. Period. I think the sound of a room can add life and character to systems, and other than things rattling from a sub (I hate that), I think people get too crazy about this stuff. All speakers image differently and the 83% thing seems just silly, unless you're utterly clueless about listening or you review speakers for a living. Good gear can be enjoyed AND fit in a living space without sacrificing esthetics or removing the fireplace with a jackhammer. Put the speakers in front of you and toe 'em or not until they seem to sound good on most stuff, get a beer, relax, and enjoy. This method works 100% of the time.
Sebrof...I agree, but feel you may have missed my point. As long as the imageing and response of speakers meet my personal (and somewhat critical) tastes, I'm fine with some room sound. Many "audiogoners" might tweek the bejesus out of a room to obtain optimum response, but after many (over 40) years as a musician and sound tech I've come to prefer less padding and more ambience, and a specific personal living space esthetic. If the speakers sound less than ideal in some area, and it bothers my critical ear, I move 'em around. I had a neighbor who was a well regarded gear reviewer (Lars...he died a few years ago) who had a severely tweeked listening room...and he LOVED the sound of my non-tweeked room...go figure.
Doesn't the nearly infinite disparity between various speaker's responses in rooms, including tweeter off and on axis dispersion and woofer loading sort of obviate set-up formulae? And...has anybody CHANGED the speaker position months after thinking one has dialed it in due to some personal tonal preference change of heart? And is "formulae" really a word? As an aside...yesterday I draped a blanket (tastefully of course) over the back of the leather couch I listen from (providing some high freq. absorption on either side of my head), and it dramatically cleaned things up.
Obviate: To anticipate and dispose of effectively; render unnecessary.

Now that we've cleared THAT up...Pettyfeveresk: I am concerned that your spouse is named "my dog Hanna"

My listening room has furniture, book cases, paintings, a glass wall, moose head (not really), a high sloping ceiling, and no formulaic solution. So I merely listen...combfilteringstandingwaves be damned! Also..."off axis" is extremely taste and speaker design driven and again, no formula, especially if you're face is over 6 feet away from the tweeter, and rooms generally do NOT have a specific "frequency curve" except what can maybe be measured in one spot, and that has zero to do with music (soundstage specifically) unless you listen with your face stuck to the window or you hang from the ceiling fan and measured those places. I've used a few vastly different speakers in that room...all requiring COMPLETELY different positioning to get to a sweet spot.