Handy little speaker set-up calculator.
Helped me out with a difficult room.
Apologies in advance if link not allowed.
4 Likes
Interesting i get a yellow/green for my listening position.
Modelling suggests I need the speakers closer to the rear wall, mine is currently 1 ft away and is rear ported (too close the bass was bloated)
I suppose its a rough guide, taking into account the limited information entered. It helped me identify definite no go areas.
I found it quite limiting as entering positions was inaccurate and it takes no account of differing speakers, room characteristics, speaker toe-in and rake etc. Moving speakers an inch or two etc. can sometimes make the world of difference.
I suggest you take a look at the earlier topic
Creating a Soundstage - speaker placement - a massive improvement for zero cost! - Hi-Fi Corner - Naim Audio - Community
This relies upon how it sounds using your speakers, in your room and importantly being judged by your ears.
Shows very close to what I have. I wish they added an option to show some furniture, etc.
It seems a useful tool to set a starting point for speaker and listening positions, if you can put the speakers where suggested, and if you can sit in the best coloured zone somewhere close to an equilateral triangle with the speakers. However as with many such tools it only fits rectangular or square rooms and although it says it calculates three dimensionally, it is not tailored to the room (I guess it assumes a flat ceiling parallel to the floor, around 2.4-2.7m high. Oddly it appears to measure from the centre of the speaker, whereas in fact what counts is where the drivers are - the front face (baffle) on most speakers for distance from rear wall and centre of the drivers (bass driver in particular) for distance from side walls.
Don’t forget this thread: Speaker placement guide which contains other guidance on speaker positioning (and given the real world differences between rooms, not just their dimensions, all guidance can only be a starting point.
once the starting point has been found, tuning using a tool like REW can then help optimise (some people optimise by ear, but I find REW is a far quicker way, as testing each position takes only a minute of so, and can be compared directly with previous without having to go back and forth a cocuo,e of times to verify.
As can moving your head!
If you get it right this is not an issue. No single sweet spot and you can move around the room.
Please no more Hannibal pics.
I’m not sure how useful this tool really in in practice. I have PMC Twenty5.23s and they have a very wide off-axis response that works well throughout a room. And Omega Junior 8 XRS which have a tiny off axis response and no positioning is going to give you an acceptable result unless you are sitting in the 1m sweet bubble.
The characteristics of a given speaker are going to vary so wildly as to make this useless. It’s like trying to work out the trajectory for flying to the moon but no one will tell you how much the rocket weighs, how fast it is going, or where it basted off from. Just too many critical variables absent.
1 Like
I wasn’t referring to a sweet spot - just that moving your head a few inches can change the sound noticeably almost anywhere, different frequencies increased or reduced in different places, no matter how the speakers are set up, unless the room is well treated, or speakers recessed in the wall to prevent comb filtering.
With speakers best is to optimise based on effect in the main area of listening, which may be a sweet spot if just one listener, or perhaps a sofa if a number of people. Of course, this is talking about optimising for focussed listening, not just having music playing while doing things, which is far less critical.
2 Likes
Thanks for the website link. Put my room in it and the only green spots were directly in front of the speaker. Literally the rest of the room was a shade of red. The size and proportions must have been designed to spoil my listening. WAF and budget rules out room treatment so at least I can put to bed the idea of any more system upgrades until we move house! Unless I go for a MuSo for the office…
I too had more red than Soho, and my ears recognised this. Moving to a side wall achieved much better results.
There are of course degrees of room treatment, while what is needed can vary hugely from room to room. Regarding appearance, other than bass traps, panels need not necessarily be visually intrusive - even just a 50mm thick can make a big difference to some room effects, though others need thicker, but they are available in any colour you choose - they can be the same colour as a wall - or can be printed with a picture of your choice, so you can have them displaying photographs, or copies of your favourite art. But often something simple like rearranging the room can make a huge difference, e.g. speakers ‘firing’ across the room instead of down it (or vice versa) - and the OP’s linked tool can be used to show that. Then there are other options, one being diagonal positioning, which in some rooms can work very well.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.