System location considerations

I’ll soon be setting my system up in a new room and I’ve picked up a lot of tips on various threads. I thought it would be useful to create a checklist. This is what I have so far:

Speaker and listening position
Dedicated mains feed
Purpose made rack with isolation
Twin tower brains/brawn configuration
Rack not positioned between speakers but to one side
Network connection
Room treatment

Anything else I need to get this right first time, not least the location of the dedicated power sockets. Room will be decorated so it makes sense to get the sockets installed beforehand so some careful planning needed.

Network connection

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Room treatment

These threads are worth a view:

And this, despite its length:

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Yes that’s a good one. Presumably a cable directly form router is preferably to wireless?

Its generally considered most reliable as it removes any potential wifi issues but the new mesh setups might have improved things.it could be via a hardwired switch if thats easier rather than direct to router.

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Wow this takes speaker placement to a whole new level!

Also the video on room acoustics and treatments was an eye opener indeed

Heavy curtains
Lock on the door to keep everyone out

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Drinks cabinet?

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Now we’re taking!

Are the heavy curtains to shield the glass behind from reflecting sound?

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A detail but ensure your 13 amp sockets are unswitched. One less interuption in the chain.

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I just plugged my room measurements into one of the calculators (I used Metres, not sure if it supposed to be feet but I only did it for a laugh), the rule of thirds gave me my best starting point. Alternatives put the speakers to near the middle of the room (Cardas) or speakers outside of the room (Real Trap 38% option 1). It is very similar to how I have them placed now but has more width between the speakers. I shall see if I can accommodate this - will mean a bit of heavy lifting - and have play tonight.

If you go through this tread of mine, there are a few tips:

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Where did you find the calculators please?

This is the link I used:

Speaker Placement Calculator (noaudiophile.com)

Taken from the reply by @Innocent_Bystander so thanks are due to him.

A shame about all those calculators is that they all seem to assume two things:

  • the room’s a square or rectangle
  • there’s a free choice of speaker placement and listening position within that area.

That’s not going to be realistic for most people. For example see my situation below. U shaped room, one “square” of it can be used for this purpose, listening position is fixed. (can be moved left/right of course)

If anyone knows of a calculator that can deal with other shapes, and designate a subsection of the space for placement, or at least a fixed listening position, that would be great.

+--------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                        |
|   U           U                                        |
|                                                        |
|                    +--------------+                    |
|                    |              |                    |
|                    |              |                    |
|      |======|      |              |                    |
+--------------------+              +--------------------+

U = Speaker
|=| = Sofa

In the olden days you could just pick up your Getto Blaster with its 16 HP2 batteries, and move it to where you like - can’t do that with a HiFi stack

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I agree with you that it is a pity there seem to be no recommendations specifically addressing common real-life living room variants, perhaps the most frequent non-rectangular being L-shaped.

Can the listening position not be moved away from the wall? Against the wall is inherently a poor position. Can the layout be rotated 90 degrees? Or even something between?

Nah, not without disturbing domestic bliss and adding tons of extension cords. I’m actually not unhappy with the current setup. Sure, in theory it could probably be improved, but I’m not complaining about my setup. It’s a living space, not just a listening space. I might play a bit more with the speaker placement at some point perhaps.

It was more just an example of something that won’t fit the any of the calculators, which don’t seem to be designed for real living situations.

Just been through your room swapping thread @Mike_S : a very interesting read and looks like you had fun on the journey too. Your Totems look the biz too :+1:

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My room has a small notch cut out of one corner where the stairs come up which must make some difference