Placement of Salons to maximize soundstaging


I have a new pair of Salons and would appreciate set-up tips from Salon owners.

My initial placement has them 8.5 ft. apart (measured from tweeters) and, likewise, 8.5 ft. from my ears. They are toed in so that I can't see the inner side of either speaker, which means they are pretty much pointing directly at me and their acoustic centers "cross" a foot or so behind my head. The tweeters are 40" from the side walls and 35" from the back walls (more on the back walls in a moment). My ears are 41" off the ground. The speakers are spiked. The back wall in fact isn't a wall, properly speaking, but rather, is a pair of 3 ft. pieces of wall extending into the room from each side wall and forming the bases of an arch of wall which separates the 20'D x 15'W x 12'H living room from the 10'D x 15' W x 12H dining room (the entrance to the dining room directly behind the speakers and created by the arch is roughly 9'W x 10'D). In other words, each speaker's port has a 3 ft. piece of wall behind it and a big open space that leads to the dining room.

I'm driving the Salons with VAC 140 monoblocks through Kimber Select all-silver 3038 speaker cables, which creates lots of air (and, for the uninitiated, the VAC's a hell of a lot of slam and plenty of woofer control -- as I suspected, they do great with the Salons)

I'm getting very good soundstaging and the speakers more-or-less disappear. The bass is flat to about 30 Hz., but then falls off rapidly because the ports are not receiving much reinforcement from the small walls they fire against, but this is fine, as I'm in an apartment building and rarely listen to things like pipe organ music.

What I really like is for speakers to "disappear". Does anyone have tips in this regard?

Thank you in advance.
raquel

Showing 1 response by rzemkoski

When my Salons "disappear", its largely due to the recording. I have them 7ft into the room and 4ft from the side walls in a 20x30ft room. Like you, I listen in the nearfield, with the inside panels just visible from the "sweet spot". The soundstage is high ,deep and wide with the music portrayed from behind the Salon.

With so many drivers in your face, very large speakers have a pronounced presence in the room (acoustically and physically) which makes them a bit harder to disappear. Bookshelfs and monitors are champions of the disappearing act. But we're lucky, we've got the Salon!

Any room treatment? A large Tubetrap in the center of your dining room entrance would give you a more concentrated center image and will enhance the disappearing effect. Tubetraps are somewhat light and can be moved away when your not "engaged".

Revel in your speakers!