Perfect equilateral triangle has always been good to me.
Speakers about 10-15" from the back wall and about 8' from seating position, toed in to aim directly at seating position (unless they are crossfired with big waveguides). I put it into sketchup or cad to get the exact placement and then make sure the speakers are where they should be down to the mm. Then a level on each axis of the speaker to make sure it's true. Make sure nothing or as little as possible between the speakers, and from the speakers to me. Then run Audyssey and ta-da!
When I do this I notice that most speakers of the same 'type' end up sounding more or less the same. IE - dome tweeter / cone mid-woofers.
Speakers about 10-15" from the back wall and about 8' from seating position, toed in to aim directly at seating position (unless they are crossfired with big waveguides). I put it into sketchup or cad to get the exact placement and then make sure the speakers are where they should be down to the mm. Then a level on each axis of the speaker to make sure it's true. Make sure nothing or as little as possible between the speakers, and from the speakers to me. Then run Audyssey and ta-da!
When I do this I notice that most speakers of the same 'type' end up sounding more or less the same. IE - dome tweeter / cone mid-woofers.
Yes, all DSP is not the same, and I should have mentioned that.
You still need to have the speakers out far enough away from the wall behind them to not be coupled to the wall. DSP cannot really correct for that.
Several years ago I attended a DEQX demo room at RMAF. I was simply amazed with DEQX. The demonstrator even had speakers in the worst possible place in the room just to show off how good DEQX could be, and was.
Ya, but DEQX is $4k and you gotta know how to do it, or else have the DEQX guy do it for you for extra.
Good careful speaker positioning gets me close enough, and at no cost or fuss.
You still need to have the speakers out far enough away from the wall behind them to not be coupled to the wall. DSP cannot really correct for that.
Several years ago I attended a DEQX demo room at RMAF. I was simply amazed with DEQX. The demonstrator even had speakers in the worst possible place in the room just to show off how good DEQX could be, and was.
Ya, but DEQX is $4k and you gotta know how to do it, or else have the DEQX guy do it for you for extra.
Good careful speaker positioning gets me close enough, and at no cost or fuss.
It's not the point though. Now and then a tool comes along that makes it easier to do something that a few people have already been doing in different ways.
My post mentioning the DEQX demo stated that the speakers were purposely poorly positioned to demonstrate what DEQX could do. This was mostly in regards to speaker crossover improvement and room correction. I don't recall any mention of bass performance, but I suppose that could be done if the speaker/amp combo is capable.
And I'm just not familiar with any other DSP. And I wouldn't exactly consider myself familiar with DEQX just from one demonstration, impressive as it may have been.
And I'm just not familiar with any other DSP. And I wouldn't exactly consider myself familiar with DEQX just from one demonstration, impressive as it may have been.
Subject drift ... absolutely epidemic around here.
To respond to the original question... When setting up a system I usually start in the obvious position of both speakers along the wall roughly on the 1/4 and 3/4 marks... Then I use Room EQ Wizard to take a measurement and see what's going on... I will then juggle the speakers around, taking measurements after each move, until I find the best spot for them.
Since preference and decor do matter, I know it's likely the speakers will be moved a bit after I leave, so I generally advise they not be in a rush to put things where the plants look best... but rather should listen to the system for a few days, move things slowly, in small increments then repeat.
The only hard rule I leave them with is that the speakers should be equal distances from the walls and from the sweet spot, and on an equal angle either side of the sweet spot.
Using EQ or DSP is a final process, used sparingly to fix up only whatever the positioning can't fix.
Does that help?
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If I may, I would like to ask a couple of questions and make a couple of comments.
What are you looking for as "best spot" when you find it?
Do you consider room symmetry at all?
You've made mention of equal distances from walls and listening spot, and to me this only works if the room is perfectly symmetrical in dimension, reflective characteristics, and acoustic space. Of course since most rooms are not perfectly symmetrical, then DSP can help with that. And you do that.
Ever since 2007 when I heard speakers set up with what's called Master Set, where the sound is pretty much the same any place in the room, I have tried to get that same sound. And now I have it.
It is really outside the box of conventional thinking. I have certainly been taken with it much more than others who have heard speakers set from this method.
I have also heard much the same sound quality from the DEQX demo that I earlier mentioned. It's just that a DSP correction is only good for a very small listening area and Master Set is good for a much broader listening area.
What are you looking for as "best spot" when you find it?
Do you consider room symmetry at all?
You've made mention of equal distances from walls and listening spot, and to me this only works if the room is perfectly symmetrical in dimension, reflective characteristics, and acoustic space. Of course since most rooms are not perfectly symmetrical, then DSP can help with that. And you do that.
Ever since 2007 when I heard speakers set up with what's called Master Set, where the sound is pretty much the same any place in the room, I have tried to get that same sound. And now I have it.
It is really outside the box of conventional thinking. I have certainly been taken with it much more than others who have heard speakers set from this method.
I have also heard much the same sound quality from the DEQX demo that I earlier mentioned. It's just that a DSP correction is only good for a very small listening area and Master Set is good for a much broader listening area.
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I think that regardless of the symmetry of the room, you can still get a dead-on center image with an equilateral triangle (or something close to it) And if you want to widen the sweet spot then you can use constant directivity speakers in a cross-firing setup. Depending on the degree of dispersion then they don't really care about the boundaries of the room. That's the point of say a 90 degree waveguide,
If you are also able to get 'equal loading' of the room, and things to sound the same on the outside ends of the speakers, then that's icing on the cake.
In my room the left speaker has a corner to it's side, and the right speaker has a wide open space that leads to another room. Since the left side reflects energy back into the room my DSP automatically pulls a few db from any speaker that I place there. That's an example of DSP helping placement. But if I have one speaker one foot towards center (or away, or whatever) and the other stays on a perfect 30 degree line from me, then there's nothing my DSP can do to stop the center image from collapsing. I wouldn't sacrifice that center image in order to 'load the room' equally.
My DSP is Audyssey MultEQ XT32 btw, quite an advanced piece of kit. The only reason I haven't switched to something like Dirac is because Audyssey is still the only one that can do dynamic loudness equalization, which I simply will not give up. That one was a game changer.
If you are also able to get 'equal loading' of the room, and things to sound the same on the outside ends of the speakers, then that's icing on the cake.
In my room the left speaker has a corner to it's side, and the right speaker has a wide open space that leads to another room. Since the left side reflects energy back into the room my DSP automatically pulls a few db from any speaker that I place there. That's an example of DSP helping placement. But if I have one speaker one foot towards center (or away, or whatever) and the other stays on a perfect 30 degree line from me, then there's nothing my DSP can do to stop the center image from collapsing. I wouldn't sacrifice that center image in order to 'load the room' equally.
My DSP is Audyssey MultEQ XT32 btw, quite an advanced piece of kit. The only reason I haven't switched to something like Dirac is because Audyssey is still the only one that can do dynamic loudness equalization, which I simply will not give up. That one was a game changer.
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i am not sure this is true, the critical distance is very present in all rooms. and it is good to know about it, it open my eyes for the problem. before i heard about it i could not understand what was wrong in my setup, all looked so good in measurements but i could hear this "masking" effect as very present. it was very frusrating. i tried many things to overcome this but with no luck, the only cure was to sitt closer to the speakers, now i understand why, because of the critical distance.
so, for a clean speaker output setup i would recommend start with placing speakers as much free standing as possible, then start listening in the speaker near field and increase the distance until speaker output starts sounding colored or masked, you have then reached the critical distance
Both level and time are important if you want to maintain a stable, accurate image Sound localization - Wikipedia
Yes, very much so. Which is the principle that cross-fired CD speakers work off. Further distance but more on axis energy from one, and the opposite from the other in either horizontal direction off center.
Yes, your room presents a very difficult situation, maybe the most difficult of all. I have had similar rooms in the past and found them difficult. My current room is very unsymmetrical and difficult. It took me a long time to obtain my goal as described. In my room I sit way over to the right side as there is an obstruction in the middle of the room where I might naturally prefer to sit. It's pretty hard to remove a fireplace from a house. And I prefer to not sit in a moveable chair in front of the fireplace.
Generally, one can sit pretty close to the middle between the speakers. I used to, until I got tired of the desk chair on rollers and preferred the comfy old chair off to the side.
Here's a pic that shows the speakers in the room, taken from my listening chair. I have since moved the player and volume control box to be over in the corner above the not shown subwoofer. If I had an updated pic it would show the speakers to be much as in the pic, though I have moved them some. Left speaker is now a few inches more out into the room and the right speaker is about the same.
With the way I do it, it is all about the speaker's relative position to each other that is most important, after getting them far enough away from the wall to not be coupled to it.
From my seat, I have a perfect L-R stereo image, same as if I sat in the middle. Mono is also perfectly centered. I have a lot of 50's jazz and much of it is mono, so mono is a big deal.
Here's a pic that shows the speakers in the room, taken from my listening chair. I have since moved the player and volume control box to be over in the corner above the not shown subwoofer. If I had an updated pic it would show the speakers to be much as in the pic, though I have moved them some. Left speaker is now a few inches more out into the room and the right speaker is about the same.
With the way I do it, it is all about the speaker's relative position to each other that is most important, after getting them far enough away from the wall to not be coupled to it.
From my seat, I have a perfect L-R stereo image, same as if I sat in the middle. Mono is also perfectly centered. I have a lot of 50's jazz and much of it is mono, so mono is a big deal.
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I've no doubt you can get a pretty good image, but even with a mono source it could become "blurred" due to the different way we locate sound at different frequencies. This is an interesting test though the time differences are rather large Stereo Perception, Sound Localization & Auditory Cues
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