An Experiment in Speaker Placement


For a host of reasons – WAF, the placement of the cable box, the ability to walk through the room, and my desire to have my system someplace where it’s integrated with our home life, as opposed to be locked in a dedicated room – my system and speaker placement has never been ideal.

My room is 15x18 and ordinarily all of the gear is on one long wall with my listening chair backed against the opposing wall which leaves my head too far from the speakers. In general it leaves the system sounding ok on image width, but very flat and one dimensional front to back.

It sounds good, and of course I listen to it that way all the time, but I’ve been really curious to see if there was a better room setup.

A friend had e-mailed me the Cardas website, which among other useful information has a section on proper speaker placement (http://www.cardas.com/content.php?area=insights&content_id=26&pagestring=Room+Setup) which includes how to calculate your distances from side and rear walls, as well as where to put your chair, so I thought I’d give this a spin.

My wife graciously agreed to vacate the family room for the weekend, let me store the sofa in the kitchen, and make a pile of everything else in the corner so I could play with this.

And now it’s set up. How does it sound?

Well, for starters, all the essential qualities of my system are still there. The speakers have the same basic sonic quality and bass extension, the amp has the same clarity and the CDP has the same level of detail. All of which are good things.

The differences though are real and important, and I’ll say right now, beneficial.

To begin with, the scale of music is greatly improved. Image sizes actually approximate what they might sound like in a hall or club. They’re bigger and more appropriate to the music. A good example is Ahmad Jamal’s new record, ‘A Quiet Time’. If you haven’t heard this record, it’s among the best piano recordings I’ve heard in a while. It really does a great job of capturing the size, and particularly the weight of the instrument, and with the room set up this way the size of the instrument sounds remarkably close to what a real piano in the room would sound like.

Second, the speakers really disappear. Spendor S8s are good at this trick in most settings, including the way my room is normally set up, but the transformation seems particularly complete this way. Listening to Oscar Peterson meets Roy Hargrove and Ralph Moore there is nothing that seems to be emanating directly from either speaker. An adjustment in toe-in – pointing the speakers directly at the listening position – really locked the images into place across the width of the soundstage.

Which leave us with the final dimension: soundstage depth.

I would love to be able to say that I’ve acquired the ability to clearly estimate how many feet behind the saxophone the drummer is sitting, but I can’t. It’s not that obvious. Certain recordings that are known for their natural stage depth do in fact exhibit those qualities well. Alain Toussaint’s Bright Mississippi leaves the big kick drum well receded on the stage – not exaggerating it – but certainly making it more obvious. Another favorite for stage depth, Clifford Jordan’s Live at Ethel’s also exhibited good depth, however, unexpectedly, the entire sound stage, including the lead tenor horn sounded a bit back from the plane of the front of the speakers.

I think because the speakers are closer together than I usually have them, some recordings that sometimes seem overly baffled between instruments also seem to have a more natural presentation. Shelly Manne and His Men Play Peter Gunn – a personal favorite, fantastic recording and terrific performance from the early days of stereo on the Contemporary Label – sounds much more naturally organized.

But back to the depth question: yes, in certain passages instruments sound more properly receded that they do in my normal setup – pianos behind horns, etc. – but its much more subtle than that. With the instruments sized properly, with appropriate scale and weight, recordings that have room reverberations and depth exhibit them naturally. Those that don’t have those effects don’t suddenly sprout them. But the scale itself leads to a sound that has a more physically realistic, three dimensional quality. It sounds great!

My only complaint? Eventually my wife is going to come back downstairs and tomorrow I’ll have to put everything back where it works best for the household. But I’m going to enjoy it for a few hours first.
grimace
Once you've followed the Vandersteen guide, get a copy of the XLO reference disk (available at Amazon.com) to fine tune steup. It uses in-phase and out-of-phase signals and and the refinement of just a few inches to compensate for room acoustice can make a dramatic difference. I've been tweaking my setup for years while trying to accomodate room aesthetics, like you, and the Vandersteen - XLO combination brought me much greater satisfaction than Cardas and other formulas.
If you are in a 15"X18" room set up on the long wall you need room treatment. Is that your chair backed up to the windows? Talk your wife into some heavy window treatment and leave the opposite wall (behind the speakers) alive. If the listening seat is backed up to a wall get some commercial room treatment. I use ASC Tube Traps. They are not cheap, but they are the best.

Long wall and short wall set ups have different sounds and different presentations. The long wall gives more width and less depth. The short wall gives more depth and less width. You will have better midbass on the long wall and better deep bass on the short wall.

Once you understand your room you know what to expect from your system.

You really have no need to be concerned with side walls. With your situation you should have plenty of distance from side walls.

With the proper room treatment and furniture arrangement you may end up with a compromise that works for everyone.
Sorry. You're screwed. Room is a huge factor. Strike one. WAF is bigger- strikes, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine. Side retired. You're out.

All joking aside- you may want to have a look at what Rives Audio can do for your room. Not only will they tailor it for sound, but they have some very nice designs which can substantially affect the WAF. It can get pricey, but it pales in comparison to what you've spent on your components. I do agree- when I set up per the Cardas instructions, imaging and soundstaging got much better. But space was lost for sure. My room is a disaster. Drumkit in the corner, built in bookcases, odd dimensions, high ceilings, angled walls- just a nightmare. It was suggested to toss a large blanket over the drumkit when not in use. I'm sure that will look positively stunning. You have to appease the WAF. Rives may help. You must keep that command center in place! Do not surrender! Does she not appreciate the sound? My wife at first demanded that I "get all this crap out of my living room!" When I moved to my den, I upgraded components significantly, and now she states that it's a "waste to have something that sounds this good in a place where WE (yes, WE) can't listen to it more often." Go figure.
Yeah, well, she actually volunteered to see if we could figure out how to make this setup work, but seeing as how there would only be my chair in the sweet spot, she'd be a second class listener shunted off to the side for sure. Plus I'd have to move the TV and cable, patch the holes in the wall and I'd still have to wedge the sofa back in there. While I love the way it sounds, I think I'm going to have to suck in up and put it back.
As mentioned by others, the room is everything. If you have not read Floyd Toole's book 'Sound reproduction' please do so. It will help you 'see' what your are hearing and offer some solutions. Also, take some measurements using some of the free soft ware that can be down loaded from the web. Putting an 'echo buster' behind your listening position would be a good first step. Sometimes the WAF can be accommodated by using room treatments only when you are actually listening. Look into the Acoustic Revive/Furutech stuff. As always, the 'final solution' is to get a dedicated listening room that can be solely engineered to best sound.