Siting SBLs in room

Hi Pete,
I would definitely move them away from the corners and much closer to eachother. At all times maintain equal distance to the sidewalls whilst experimenting. My guess with a listening distance of 3 metres the inside edges should be no more than 1.60 mtr. apart with 135s up them. Personally I would only entertain a wider distance between them, unless you say were running 52/ 4x135s and gear beyond that. The 82 pre could also be your weak link for bass weight.
What is your room dimensions and how far to the back wall from your golden ears? ATB Peter

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Room is 4.5m into 1930s bay window, by 3.7m, 2.6m high. The speakers are either side of a tiled 1930s fire place, which isn’t ideal but only place for them really.I’ve moved he speakers so they are 1.5m apart, but are now getting a bit close to the fire place. The fire place sticks out 150mm, the speakers are now 500mm from the corners. What I am finding is that the bass increases the further I get from the speaker and closer to the rear wall. Not sure if it really is much better in my speaker position, but will keep on with fine adjustments.

Thanks for all your detailed explanations, not sure I am ready for the RAW route yet, I have moved the speakers to 1.5m apart as I explained further below, or is that above!

Hi Pete, yes aren’t domestic constraints just bliss :roll_eyes:. Just checked your room dimensions on The Amroc Roommode Calculator and it’s actually a really good room dimensionally. Always a good start! :+1:t3:
Excuses if a haven’t read your OP properly ( somehow that seems to be happening my end at the moment), but have you recently moved your system into this room and now finding what you are finding, or has anything else within the system changed?
Going back to your dimensions and as both speakers have to go either side the fireplace, does this mean that the fireplace is centered mid wall in the the main bulk of the room and then there is the added bay window bit only on one side of the room - now it would be rude not to ask for a photo? :wink:
ATB Peter
As you started with a 3 meter distance and now down to 1.5 meter, how come your speakers are now only 500 mm from the corners, surely you should have gained 0.75 meter each side, no?? :thinking:

…If you now wish you hadn’t asked, just tell me to shut up! :rofl: ATB Peter


For your perusal :+1:t3:

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Ah, combination of poor estimation of dimension and inaccurate measurement. The figures are now exact. TBH, I thought my issue was the speakers were too close together, clearly wrong there!

I have moved speakers and units around to a temporary position to try and get the speakers right and then fit the rest to fit to the room, and preferences of others in the house :wink:

Thanks for your thoughts

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Ideally we need to see more of the corner between the speaker and the sofa. But as a start, get rid of the 3-way plug socket thing and replace with an unswitched, no led, no surge protection extension strip, preferably with a long lead. That way you might be able to move the left speaker left-wards a bit, and not be too far from the wall. I suspect your rack is to the left of the speaker though.

Yep rack is temporarily to the left of the speaker. I am planning to get some new speaker cable and that threw up this whole question really. ATM I only have 3.7m so am restricted to have the rack in this corner. I am planning to place it on the other side of the room with longer lengths of cable. i want to see if I can get the speakers performing better before I re-site the system, giving me a better indication of how much speaker cable I might need.

From all the great contributions I can see my next step is to move the rack and the plug and move the left speaker a little to the left. I have loads of NACA4 spare so will probably temporarily use this to allow me to make the changes Moving teh rack and the socket will let me fine tune speaker position, having them closer together and equally spaced from the room corners.

That looks like perfect distance apart for SBLs. My room is 3.6m wide and my then SBLs were almost identically distanced, albeit equidistant from each side of the fireplace.

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Hope you get it sorted @PeteC , you have a lovely looking Naim set.

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Mine were about that too, with plenty of distance to the side walls. Don’t recall getting more bass when in line with a speaker.

I wonder what they sound like evenly spaced each side of the fireplace cos that would be nice to look at. It might not make all that much difference especially if sat reasonably close, although we can’t see how near the left hand wall is, so that might scupper things.

Are the spikes clear of any carpet gripper strips Pete? I think my SBLs ended up 7 or 8cm away from the rear wall in order to avoid the strips. Still had plenty of bass.

Good point about the gripper rods, they are sitting off them, checked when I set up. I will be moving the rack, which is to the left of the left speaker, giving me more room to equally space them around the fireplace as you said. I will reposition the plug socket as well.

Update on speaker positioning. Thanks everyone for helpful comments. I have been doing some measurements with a simple db meter on my phone and low base is about 5db higher at 70db front on to the speaker than at my listening position. as I move the db meter towards my seat low base gradually drops, so I am thinking speakers need to be equally spaced either side of fire place and closer together, at the 1.5m I have now, hopefully that will position my seat in the sweet spot. Hope that works as I can’t move seat further back as it is against the wall and I can’t move speakers closer together, because of the fire place!

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I presume this meant REW!

It is not a rabbit hole as suggested by Michael17, rather it is the easiest and by far the fastest way to set up speakers and listening position optimally - especially when there seem to be problems. It is simply a tool for literally seeing what is happening in the room, and to test any position its short frequency sweeps give you the image in just a couple of minutes. In my room, with a bass-deficient area exactly where I originally planned the listening position, and no practical movement of speakers fixing, I used REW and I ended up completely rethinking the room layout, which yielded very good results, Not perfect, as some room treatment is definitely needed, but a planned house move in near future precluded committing to improving this particular room.

Of course you are limited by the SBLs having to be against a wall to utilise its bass enhancement, which will limit options for speaker positioning, but. REW can still help explore around those limited options, and explore best listening position.

You may find this recentthread useful
https://community.naimaudio.com/t/speaker-placement-guide/

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Thanks for the link will read and digest. The REW (sorry for the mistake) sounds interesting, what sort of mic is needed?

A measuring mic - which will have a flat anx calibrated omnidirectional response. REW recommend the Umik-1 which is relativdly inexpensive (somewhere around £100), and USB connectable so it can plug straight in to the computer without being limited by the latter’s soundcard capability on mic. You can pick up for maybe £50-60 secondhand - and sell on for much the same when done (unless a future need is envisaged).

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I’m going to clear out the clutter in the room and start afresh using the Rule of thirds 29% version from a link in the link you posted, starting with 1.45 between speakers and 2.33 from the main wall and go from there. Maybe I will be lucky, maybe I will try the REW, sounds like an interesting exercise. It is all great fun in and gives me a focus when I have time on my hands. Thanks for your help

Good luck with it. The main thing of course is to get a sound you are happy with. In my experience it is possible to get good sound from decent speakers in any room (perhaps read that as any room I would want to be in!). Some rooms can be challenging, requiring more effort and willingness to to adapt - but it is worth persevering for the end result.

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