thanks, I was not sure if linking this is allowed
Beware of guides that put in numerical figures. These are based on mathematical absolutes and are no way ideal in relation to your own set up.
Most speakers give out 90% of capability just plonked anywhere within each other. It’s just that last %.
I like the voicing challenge. Moving the speakers around the room to find a broad useable area that’s harmonious to room acoustics, then fine tuning.
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So much depends on the room. I had my speakers before last - moderately big floorstanders - in 6 different living rooms, and have in two other rooms, and they sounded good in all without much fussing with positioning from the initial spots. Their successor, a larger pair of floorstanders, I’ve had in 4 living rooms, and have heard in another, ditto in every room except my present one, where when first set up the sound was simply awful. Absolutely no bass. No way could I live with it. The solution took a complete re-think of room layout, approaching as I described in my first post on this thread. The result was really good. And later when I replaced the speakers with my present ones it just took a touch of fine tuning around the same positions.
Prompted by another thread musing on diagonal placement I had a niggling memory of reading something and have tracked it down, it being quite a readable paper discussing layout generally but also mentioning diagonal.
You might be able to get copies from an archived version of the website:
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I think this raises a different question about mentality rather than speaker placement. So many people buy things because they can, regardless of the fact they cannot use them. When I see people with massive expensive speakers half obscured by a sofa, yes I understand they have living realities to deal with. But in the same situation, I’d consider those realities dictate I should not buy those speakers regardless of whether I could.
We often talk about buying the best hifi you can reasonably afford. But it should be the best hifi you can reasonably afford or can reasonably use properly; whichever limit is hit first.
But there are a few people that think, I may well live in the broom cupboard under the stairs with .05m of floor space but dammit, I can afford Kudos Titan 808s so I’m damn well getting them even if I have to put one on top of the other sideways and sit 30cm from them.
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Which is silly, that situation obviously calls for DBLs
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But people also move around too and what may have worked in one house/room may not somewhere else. Personally I wouldn’t stop a house move just because my hifi wouldn’t work as well in a new room.
I too have looked at a lot of system photos and thought similar thoughts. However, everyone’s situation is different and everyone has a different threshold for what they’re willing to accept.
As soon as I see the phrase ‘Audio Nirvana’ I tend to switch off! I did read through the rest of the article. All I could think was ‘how tedious’! Normally, in my experience, half an hour of common sense placement and minor adjustments is enough to get very satisfactory results.
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It’s an interesting thought, but there’s a balance of course. If a sofa is obscuring half the cones, of course it makes more sense to invest in standmounts which rise above it.
But often on this forum people talk about not getting the most out of what you have, and mean that from a pure sound quality pov. When living realities dictate that possibly aesthetics, room use other than for music etc. are equally or more important.
In such a scenario the current setup might be the best setup, taking all aspect into account. In that scenario it’s not unthinkable that better equipment will, in many cases, yield improvement. Even if in theory even more performance could be had with the existing equipment in a different/better setup.
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With thanks to @anon39880737 for reminding me, and because I don’t think it is possible to post Excel files here, the following links will take you to Salford Acoustic’s published spreadsheets for 1) best room ratios, and 2) second best room ratios (2a = .zip 2MB, 2b = .xls 300k).
These may be useful for anyone building or modifying a room with an opportunity to set or modify dimensions to help maximise sound quality.
I’ve tested these links and they work, though you may have to copy them to or open them from a computer rather than phone or tablet.
There is a shortcut: use your ears to experiment with placement. Select whatever placement results in the most enjoyment of your music.
Presently listening to: The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding
As I indicated in my post currently numbered 14 it is not always easy, depending on the room. And with a problem room I found going back to a theoreticl starting point and using REW as a tool far quicker than even starting to get there purely by ear.
In non problematic rooms I agree that is often possible to get a perfectly acceptable and enjoyable sound fairly quickly with relatively small adjustment. Many people are happy with that, and of course if that is the case there is no need to do more. - and they may be lucky enough to have hit upon the best setup right from the start.
However, given the efforts some people go to in terms of cost of equipment and/or time spent experimenting with tweaks like multitudinous permutations of cables and switches etc, it Is rather surprising that the room and its layout is often given scant
attention, when sometimes greater benefit might be achievable that way. Unless people have gone into it in detail or had a really good go with trial and error rather than simply accepting the first way it sounds good, they may be blissfully unaware that the system might sound so much better if the room was rearranged.
This thread is intended as a resource to assist those who either have problems, or want to be sure they are getting the best they can from the system they have.
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One approach that has been recommended by some members in other threads is the Sumiko Master Set process. I’m not sure that it necessarily gets the best possible out of the room, but it appears to claim to maximise the ‘sweet spot’. It would seem appropriate to include it in this thread:
Meanwhile here are a couple of other resources that may assist:
And the following is an online calculator that from room width and length gives you suggested speaker positions based on several different approaches, though of course it is for the listener to try whichever options may fit the room, to assess and the fine tune. It is interesting how different the five calculated positions can be depending on the room proportions, so if one doesn’t prove to sound good, or is impractical, one of the others might.
As mentioned in an earlier post I recommend REW as a tool to assist assessing and fine tuning.
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True, but Sumiko Masterset is pretty much based on this very thought, just with a little procedure attached to structure the finding of the placement (as tedious as it is if you try every spot in a 2cm grid)
Wow…that must be tedious work!
Well it’s just such a small grid in a certain area that already works fundamentally. And although I do not follow the method religiously now that I know it exists, this is more or less what I was doing anyway before I knew of the method - find a broad area that makes sense and kind of works, and then move the speakers with small steps within this area. Sometimes it is indeed the case that a few centimeters make all the difference
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…we agree entirely on your more subjectively based method…I find that 0.5 cm can make a big difference, particularly if your system ‘does genuine bass’!
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