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Ron’s method really works wonders for the sound, but it didn’t work wonders for my wife! I can pull those speakers out where they sound the best but they better go back to where they look the best.😂😂
Unfortunately, I'm living that reality as well. As soon as my wife leaves the house, I'm feverishly moving furniture to re-establish my sweet spot and then returning everything back to "normal" before she comes home (at least my wife gives me a 5' courtesy call before she arrives 😊). Sometimes, I wonder if speaker manufacturers could significantly enhance their profit margins by providing free WAF-based reprogramming (think Jedi mind tricks) to convert our wives into audiophiles...well, on second thought, maybe that's not such a great idea (such an action could result in the creation of an intra-household competitor that would then compete with spending those precious HiFi dollars). Oh, well, a nice thought experiment though 🤔
@jamesswilleyamericasaudito7017 Not by a long shot...that would be counter productive on so many levels... think poor man's house and the need to go back to listening to music via 30 year old Walkman cassette players because that's all you would be able to afford. I'm OK continuing to play this game of cat and mouse because at least I can afford to buy new gear once and awhile 😀
Luckily I have a dedicated listening room and the speakers are pulled out from the wall as far as I want permanently and sound great and my wife doesn’t care because she also enjoys my stereo. I wouldn’t put up with a wife that gives me a 5 minute courtesy call to move everything back, that’s bull.
I have a pair of Paradigm Titan 3's as my home theater mains, and I got an even soundstage from "any" seat was to toe them in quite far. The speaker you are closer to, you should be more off axis from, and the one you are farther from, you should be more on axis with. All the instructions I saw said point the right speaker at your right ear, and the left speaker at your left ear: This only gives balanced sound in one sitting position. I am very happy with my toed in configuration.
I have already done this method & it was an amazing difference. I had to tilt them down so only see a level top first then in /out so my eyes can see a small section of the inner side of each speaker. If a laser was to fire from those tweeters it would have hit my ears perfectly. I am 65 & thats the most precise I have ever heard any speaker. Take this from an old man with the experience of buying hifi since 1975.
Rons method is great ...but another less dramattic way is the rule of thirds and quarters. For example measure your rooms length and width ...divide each measurement by 4....then move your seat or sofa 1/4 in from the back wall....and your speaker 1/4 in from the front wall and sides ....which is a great starting point ...or divide by thirds depending how far in you want things to be!
@@joanfrederick9176 I apologise I deleted my last post ... as I didn't read your last comment fully ..but you are right, whatever makes us happy and enjoy the wonders of music is personal, subjective and all that matters! ...and yes it can be fun, frustrating and highly expensive for some....or very cheap, cheerful and even free for others too! And I guess in every hobby or industry there are serious producers and makers or those who seek to cut corners or deceive... but I think a lot of things can get OTT for those with the money to burn ..or a grail to achieve...but its all relative in the end. But am glad you found and love your setup
I have a lot of speakers , my wife would say I have a problem , I stack them on top of each other and play them every which way , there's definitely a sweet spot where each speaker sounds best in your room
When experimenting with speaker location, and you find a spot you kinda like but want to experiment more, place tape on the floor around the base of your speakers or stands. This will allow you to get the speakers exactly back to a location you had liked. Especially do this if you want to try your system in another room.
I found just buying a cheap calibration mic like the Dayton audio mic and keeping track measurements really allowed me to dial in the sound it was to hard for me to try 6 or 7 positions and keep a subjective listening experience. Having a screenshot of pink noise from each speaker placement helped me understand what I was hearing and allowed me to understand what I liked and disliked and have repeatable results.
I find with a lot of klipsch horns. they need to be slightly off axis to get the balance right or they are a little bright for my taste on the top end, and it really does work. I am not going to get rid of the speakers.
Those tips really work. Just one more tip- if you have a TV on stand , or computer screen between the speakers, better push it back behind the horizontal line level of the speakers. That makes a huge impact , every inch matter and sound different. It's one more way to fine tune the deepness of the sound stage and can help to experience a really deep and strong 3D sound. With the plenty of good speakers available nowadays IMO the best possible positioning of the speakers in the room is more important than the hardware itself.
I have my bookshelf speakers on stands on either side of my dual monitor setup, with some tweaking the soundstage is incredible. They are positioned how you describe it. Front baffle slightly in front of the monitors, tweeter at ear level, pointed just ever so slightly towards me but mostly front facing. It sounds awesome, just tested it by ear but its how you describe. Centre image is directly in the middle of my monitors. With music where theres a lot of depth or people are off centre you can clearly hear it. Its awesome!
Yes, absolutely. This solves a multitude of sins! I hate audiophiles who say the only resolve is to move the gear out of the room or build a dedicated room! It is like those people have never heard of apartments, or condos or townhomes or rented dwellings with lease rules or something.
Speaker, listener and acoustic diffuser placement together with simply avoiding hard surface reflection points too near to the listening position and between the speakers are all things vital to a quality hi-fi listening experience. A nicely matched system at 1000-2000 USD set up right in a good room will outperform nearly ANY other system (regardless of price) set up with poor placement and/or room interference (i.e. highly reverberating spaces or spaces with resonating walls or a ceiling when playing at moderate levels). There are so many audiophiles investing in expensive streamers or CD players to then hook them up to a seperate DAC via COAX or S/PDIF, expensive cables for small wattages, high-end audiophile furniture, you name it.. and still fail to get placement and the room right. All of the extra clarity/detail, soundstage and imaging a top-tier system can provide is lost when it does not get to the listeners ears do to phase cancellation, drop-off, etc.
The best thing i did for my 28 yo speakers was pulling the meter and checking the resistance on my bass woofers - as it turned out Rc was 14 ohm...no wonder they weren doing anything. Got a pair of used b&w woofers from reference series - off ebay bam! They sung sgain. After that i got curious - and got the reference drivers for mid ranges - new! Old stock cdm7nt drivers about $80 a piece- wow ! What a difference . While installing the woofers i stuffed about 2 small pillows worth of polyfill...wow again! After that i replaced old crossover caps with Dayton Audio film caps. One would wonder if spending around $400 on 28 yo speaker upgrades was worth it ....believe me it was. I even stopped looking at 702 S2's . These old bowers amaized me, soundstage blew me away...
Hi all. I have 2 floorstanders and put felt under de feet. When I'm just listening back ground music I leave them closer to the wall, but when I'm in serious listening mode I just slide them over my wooden floor to the ideal spot in the middle of the room en enjoy a great soundstage width and depth. Perfect solution for me!
I did this when Ron first posted his lots vid, I definitely found out the best placement but I still have to put everything back where it belongs when I’m done, I’ll call that exercise and we’re all good, thanks again Randy!
Just the other day I measured from the back wall (rt behind the couch) and put my speakers at equal distance off that wall (instead of front wall) And it made an improvement. My soundstage wasn't bad before but I found out the wall behind the speakers wasn't exactly linear. So id been measuring an equalateral triangle from the listening spot..but improvements were made after measuring off the back wall. I am unable to pull these 80lb monstrosities further into the living room, so LOTS isn't happening. I pulled my old Jolida FOZ SSX out of closet the other day, that thing can do some interesting things with the soundstage and bass. I had never used it before with my towers, it's kinda an amazing device.
It was kind of funny finding out that you and John Darko basically had nothing in common as far as musical tastes. I'm with you, I'm 66, an ex squid and I like metal.Thanks for the free tips. You ever notice that free beer or free lunch always tastes better?
I sit myself onto my large, heavy, settee. I'll move that closer to the speakers if you volunteer to help me move it forward, then back. 😃 Informative video as usual.
Also don’t forget to tilt up and down the speakers. Usually tilt up will expose more the lower frequencies, and tilt down will expose more the higher frequencies. In my case, I have the speakers seating on my desk, the lower frequencies were producing some distortion. Tilting them up reduced the issue… I believe the impact of those frequencies with the wooden table were reduced, minimizing this way the resulting distortion.
Tilting up or down depends on the height at which the speakers sit. It does not apply universally. Back in the day when we had huge bookshelf speakers that were not actually designed to be on a shelf, but rather on the floor they sold stands to put them on to tilt them up so that the tweeter would be aimed more at ones ear height, it helped indeed. Today though towers are generally situated to already have the tweeter at ear height when sitting and bookshelf speakers are made to where most can be stand mounted.
All great tips and they work well for a dedicated listening room but it would be nice if speaker designers would design speakers for the way most people have to use them. Most can’t pull them out more than a foot from the wall, for example.
It's been done before since the '70s. The most successful technically are the Allison range designed specifically with backs to the wall (2 reflecting surfaces), and I remember one has bass response tailored for room corners (3 reflecting surfaces). The modern solution is the port at the back of speaker, blocking off the port when up against wall to somewhat compensate for increased wall gain. We are where we are because of the long unresolved debate on room modes- the three primary modes of standing waves up-down left-right front-back will dominate the bass. There's recurring attempts to use digital signal processing to equalize out the peaks and troughs. I had experience with the pioneer system which employed a microphone at the listening position, it kinda works but it's not a panacea. It made really awful bass to just pretty bad. I haven't tried the new Dirac system yet for it's cost. My routine is start from speakers facing forward about 24" (d) from back wall, the math- quarter wavelength mode at about 50 hz is 1/4 (speed of sound/frequency), and not exactly the same as the bottom of speaker to floor dimension. Then the tiresome process of move them a little and jump back to hear the effect. USA is challenging because most rooms are multiples of four and eight feet. Yes there's a sweet spot, or a least bad compromise where the bass players comes alive more with less one-note/lumpy/woolly rhythm. Then I toe in speakers for image quality, normally the two best positions are square forward facing for best depth illusion (main vocal in front of drums); and the axis crossing just ahead of listening position for best image stability. I don't have money for superfi so life is in-between to minimize budgetfi speakers off center images vague and swimmy. As for the issue of domestic harmony, I tried putting up full height bookshelves on the front wall and announced it need access space behind speakers. It only half worked (long story). The most success was to make it non negotiable, but that will not work for everyone.
@@BingLHuiI agree…there are a few companies that optimize for wall or corner placement (Klipschhorns, Audio Note UK and Larsen for example) but they are few and far between. And it’s true, most home designers never take acoustics into consideration, even in family rooms or so-called media rooms. So at best, we are left with a compromise.
You can increase treble by getting a different cartridge and for MM cartridges, change the capacitive loading at your phono preamp. For example, an Audio Technica VM500 series tend to be a bit brighter and especially when loaded above 150pF. Changing the cartridge costs money, but changing the capacitive loading is free! 👍
I have speakers sprinkled all over the house. We downsized, it I didn’t sell any of them, so placement has been “creative”. One result of this is a pair of Klipsch LaScalas in a 10X10 office with my desk between them. They are in the corners towed in about 45 degrees. When sitting in the desk chair, the speakers are within 3 feet, but the intersection of the speaker faces would be behind me by a couple of feet. There is a subwoofer in another location. This room also is where crap in purgatory stays, so no reflective surfaces, carpeted floor, just a bizarre environment for these speakers. EXCEPT when I sit at my desk, instruments come from everywhere, but the vocalist is exactly in front of me. My theater rig with its center channel can’t do that nearly as well.
Yes, Ron did not invent L.O.T.S., but he did do a whole video explanation on it, which was good. I learned it from another source, but I don't know from where it originated. What I do know is that it really works in locking in the soundstage. The only thing is that one needs to figure out a compromise if one does not have a dedicated room (which 99% of us do not have) and depending on where one ends up. If it is easier to move the speakers to position every time one wants to listen to music, than that is the solve. If it is easier to move the seating position, than that is the solve. However, if neither one of those are doable, then it gets tricky as to compromise. However, this is also an area where room acoustical solutions may help mitigate a large compromise into a rather small compromise.
Great tips. Always felt my Spendor. Fl10s were a bit over the top in upper mid range when toed in per usual recommendations. Listening to them off axis- oh my! Thanks
mission used to design their speakers to be used against the wall with no toe in & it worked very well, the only tweaking needed was closing/opening the distance between them. don't know about the current range.
For fear of not being offensive this is great advice if you have a dedicated room for music or if your are a sound engineer setting up a studio. This ain't gonna fly in the average living room I can assure you.
Careful with the speaker height. If you go too high or low from on axis ear level you'll get phase cancellation issues which will cause big dips in the midrange at the crossover point.
Depends on rake angle (not mentioned here) and also room height. There are simply too many variables involved to give any solid advice on speaker placement. It certainly can't be reduced to a calculation. It's all just trial and error.
I know 2 Chanel is the way if you are an audiophile but I build speakers and they all have different qualities I like so I enjoy hooking them all up to my avr and submerise myself in sound and I really enjoy it. I don't know why it still has to be 2 channel if you go to a concert they have speakers everywhere
Speakers at a concert are typically mono signals, but multi channel mono seems like the ideal setup for parties, bars, or clubs, where listeners are dancing, milling about, or seated at bars or tables. Like having two TV sets on in different rooms, phase variation among the speakers would suffice for a stereo effect.
@xxxYYZxxx I know it causes logging but if I set them up so they all around me it don't hear any combing effect and it actually sounds good to me anyway
I put my tube amp on timeout due to higher tube prices and bought the Vidar 2. Been having issues locking it in to what I’m used to. This video helped me get it perfect. Thank you. By the way I’m still waiting on your Vidar 2 review 😂.
On my 2 way speakers the harshness came from the mid/woofer’s crossover point around 12k. They’re now in storage and replaced. They were over 20 years old anyway.
I find if I put my speakers in the corners on the wider end of the room I get maximum bass and if I move them closer to the center, it sounds more natural.
One more speaker adjustment is tilt. I adjusted mine with the stand spikes. This also helps align the timing between the faster high frequency waves and slower low frequency waves for non-concentric speakers. This theory is designed into speakers like Focal Grande Utopia.
Thats true in cases. Tilting angle is good as it can give a taller soind scale with the soundstage. But one has to be careful as a lot of speakers specially tweeters tend to have a pretty narrow disperssion pattern vertically. Id say look up info your spekar if you can find it and then try to tilt. In most case just an inch or incha and a half willl work wonders. In my setup with triangle Boreas 02 the tilt was very staisfying in conveying a more realistic size and location of singer and intruments .
Totally agree. A little goes a long way. My tilt was less than an inch higher on the front baffle. This moved the tweeter from ear level to about 4 inches above my ears. This widened my soundstage significantly with little negative impact to overall SQ.
Want to give my opinion. If you move a speaker out too far towards the listening position, you lose bass. It doesn't matter if it's a stand speaker or large floor model. You might win by how big the speaker sounds in depth and width. With one or possibly two subwoofer(s), this is less noticeable. Second aligning the speaker is a completely different story (toe in). This assumes that you have already found a good location but want to get the best out of it.
Hi Randy. Love these teaching shows. Have been a subcriber a long time. I allways toe in or out depending on speaker placement and room. Ifn your limited in space tone controls are best if you cant get off the wall. Try it you might like it.😅😅
My problem with my desktop system, I can’t move the desk that came with the house. Makes me very limited with the distance I can bring it out. I used to have a computer that would limit the depth between my speakers. Since I bought a DAC, I’ve been able to reduce that height of the blockage the computer screen was causing. One more thing about my DAC. After installing my DAC, that’s when I noticed a large increase of soundstage.
Not sure where to start with this one but for the sake of starting somewhere, I hope everyone noticed that the supposedly new placement recommendation also recommended an equilateral triangle between the speakers and the chair -- that's not what makes it different. Cardas was advocating this approach long before the advent of equipment shill channels on RUclips and it's a bit galling that people are still treating it like their own (or someone else's) invention. Measure the distance across the front wall and call that distance "X". Now place the speakers in such a way that the center of the tweeter is 0.276X from the front wall and 0.276X in from the side. Then position your chair so that it is 0.446X from each tweeter. Toe the speakers enough so that they fire just barely over the outside edge of your outside shoulder. Second, moving your chair closer to a pair of speakers near the front wall is a *terrible* idea. The reason is that you would be shaving the amplitude difference between the speaker's sound and the reflected sound off the front wall, which invites time-smearing. Don't do this. Ever. Third, room gain and subwoofer response are not the same thing, for the simple reason that a subwoofer provides increased sound pressure evenly across all bass frequencies, while room gain only reinforces certain frequencies, and if the speakers are pushed back far enough toward the front wall to make an audible difference, it is guaranteed to reduce the time difference between the sound coming from the speaker and the sound coming from the wall, which will ruin detail resolution and soundstage.
I tried aiming my Polk ES 20 left and right speakers directly at my sitting position and found that the soundstage collapsed and even the center channel was less clear for movies. A little toe in sounded FAR better overall.
My Forte IVs have passive radiators and they are in the recommended 8 to 12 inches from the wall and bass sounds best to me this way so I'd say yes. If I try the same with my rear ported Wharefedales they sound too boomy.
If I have a rear-ported speaker against the wall and then toe-in, will that wreak havoc with the bass/waves since they are no longer parallel to the walls?
It’s 2023 and we have angled wing mirrors for a very long time, yet angling the front speaker cabinets eludes us. Omni sound things is as close as we got. Can’t be that difficult surely.
When checking out an artist, I enjoy starting with the first album and hearing how they evolve throughout their collective musical journey. That being said, I recommend The Black Album from Metallica and any album from self titled to Issues for Korn. Personally, it's too hard to pick amongst their earlier work.
My wife had changed something in the living room that i had not noticed. So i put my speakers a bit furhter from the wall. I guess she has not noticed it yet...😂
I've tried pulling my speakers out from the wall and they don't sound as good. Much of the bass is lost. I can walk behind the speakers when they are pulled out and hear the bass I'm missing in front. They sound best against the wall and slightly toed toward the listening position.
Certainly some speakers, especially rear ported standmounts with small midbass drivers benefit from bass reinforcement from the wall. Others hate being next to the wall and the bass gets bloated and muddy, swamping the mid range. In my AV setup I have to have my front speakers right up against a wall so chose Fyne Audio speakers who have ports facing downwards to the floor. That solves the problem.
I have a weird audio illusion going on. My two speakers are about 12 feet apart. They are hooked to my TV. The TV is almost directly over the left speaker. The speakers are balanced for the center. I just watched your video on the TV and your voice seems to come from the TV instead of the center of the two speakers. What brain thing is causing that?
It should be noted that although the things mentioned work for most speakers, some speakers are different. Klipsch heritage like to be against the wall in corners. Pull them out into the room and they sound terrible.
Hi love your channel. Have been following since inception! Owe my current emotiva setup to your excellent reviews. Any chance you will publish the 200k list of winners?
Peanut butter and powdered sugar? Is that a thing? I’ve actually been plagued with years of desiring a peanut butter that was sweet like a Reese’s peanut butter cup which probably isn’t peanut butter at all. Hmmm you may have just helped me .
My speakers are too heavy to knock over, and it doesn't hurt them if kids tackle them . My sub weighs over 250lbs, on wheels, duodayton18s. My new open baffle duo 2in vertical on top center @ ear level 1meter from wall. I listen to you,sorta. I cheat, copy the high dollar stuff. New crossover and beston ribbons next. Please link me to Sith audio replacement Teflon eardrums , it's scary loud, hearing sound stage like never before similar to front array in my car installations. My friends with 10 ,000 dollar systems look at the phone listen then leave in disbelief.
yeah. no. I have to live in my apartment, which also happens to be very small. This is way, way, way out of the realm of possibility for me. Finding any location for my speakers where they can be even remotely "symmetrical" from side and rear walls is already a challenge, putting them in the middle of the room is beyond absurd. I far prefer your more reasonable, liveable recs = THANK you!
OK. That's the whole point. Do what works best for YOU, your situation, and your taste. For many of us, these ARE "reasonable, liveable recommendations". Be happy. Peace.
I know a lot of folks have super heavy speakers. sometimes furniture sliders can help to get them moved around and dialed in. Or put on your weight belt and drink 12 cups of coffee and get after it!
I'm in the same boat. Plus my wife is already bugging me about placement. She's always asking me why can't I put them closer to the wall..she would literally prefer it if I put them up against the wall.
@@cheapaudiomanI once wrote Emotiva about replacing their screw in feet on the T1 Towers with rolling casters. They kindly replied with precise measurements but then I moved so never put it into practice. The concern would be rattling by the casters but it seems that some casters are fairly silent.
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Ron’s method really works wonders for the sound, but it didn’t work wonders for my wife! I can pull those speakers out where they sound the best but they better go back to where they look the best.😂😂
Unfortunately, I'm living that reality as well. As soon as my wife leaves the house, I'm feverishly moving furniture to re-establish my sweet spot and then returning everything back to "normal" before she comes home (at least my wife gives me a 5' courtesy call before she arrives 😊).
Sometimes, I wonder if speaker manufacturers could significantly enhance their profit margins by providing free WAF-based reprogramming (think Jedi mind tricks) to convert our wives into audiophiles...well, on second thought, maybe that's not such a great idea (such an action could result in the creation of an intra-household competitor that would then compete with spending those precious HiFi dollars). Oh, well, a nice thought experiment though 🤔
Is it easier to get rod of the wife??
@@jamesswilleyamericasaudito7017 Clearly!! 😉
@jamesswilleyamericasaudito7017 Not by a long shot...that would be counter productive on so many levels... think poor man's house and the need to go back to listening to music via 30 year old Walkman cassette players because that's all you would be able to afford. I'm OK continuing to play this game of cat and mouse because at least I can afford to buy new gear once and awhile 😀
Luckily I have a dedicated listening room and the speakers are pulled out from the wall as far as I want permanently and sound great and my wife doesn’t care because she also enjoys my stereo. I wouldn’t put up with a wife that gives me a 5 minute courtesy call to move everything back, that’s bull.
I toed my KEF Q 150'S in last week, i have a VERY small listening space but i did have better imaging. Well done Randy great explanation.
I have a pair of Paradigm Titan 3's as my home theater mains, and I got an even soundstage from "any" seat was to toe them in quite far. The speaker you are closer to, you should be more off axis from, and the one you are farther from, you should be more on axis with. All the instructions I saw said point the right speaker at your right ear, and the left speaker at your left ear: This only gives balanced sound in one sitting position. I am very happy with my toed in configuration.
I have already done this method & it was an amazing difference. I had to tilt them down so only see a level top first then in /out so my eyes can see a small section of the inner side of each speaker. If a laser was to fire from those tweeters it would have hit my ears perfectly. I am 65 & thats the most precise I have ever heard any speaker. Take this from an old man with the experience of buying hifi since 1975.
Rons method is great ...but another less dramattic way is the rule of thirds and quarters.
For example measure your rooms length and width ...divide each measurement by 4....then move your seat or sofa 1/4 in from the back wall....and your speaker 1/4 in from the front wall and sides ....which is a great starting point ...or divide by thirds depending how far in you want things to be!
@@joanfrederick9176😂 😂 😂...fair enough...as everything is a compromise to a certain degree!
@@joanfrederick9176 I apologise I deleted my last post ... as I didn't read your last comment fully ..but you are right, whatever makes us happy and enjoy the wonders of music is personal, subjective and all that matters! ...and yes it can be fun, frustrating and highly expensive for some....or very cheap, cheerful and even free for others too! And I guess in every hobby or industry there are serious producers and makers or those who seek to cut corners or deceive... but I think a lot of things can get OTT for those with the money to burn ..or a grail to achieve...but its all relative in the end.
But am glad you found and love your setup
I have a lot of speakers , my wife would say I have a problem , I stack them on top of each other and play them every which way , there's definitely a sweet spot where each speaker sounds best in your room
It worked I moved it 18” toed in as recommended THX
When experimenting with speaker location, and you find a spot you kinda like but want to experiment more, place tape on the floor around the base of your speakers or stands. This will allow you to get the speakers exactly back to a location you had liked. Especially do this if you want to try your system in another room.
I found just buying a cheap calibration mic like the Dayton audio mic and keeping track measurements really allowed me to dial in the sound it was to hard for me to try 6 or 7 positions and keep a subjective listening experience. Having a screenshot of pink noise from each speaker placement helped me understand what I was hearing and allowed me to understand what I liked and disliked and have repeatable results.
I find with a lot of klipsch horns. they need to be slightly off axis to get the balance right or they are a little bright for my taste on the top end, and it really does work. I am not going to get rid of the speakers.
Those tips really work. Just one more tip- if you have a TV on stand , or computer screen between the speakers, better push it back behind the horizontal line level of the speakers. That makes a huge impact , every inch matter and sound different. It's one more way to fine tune the deepness of the sound stage and can help to experience a really deep and strong 3D sound. With the plenty of good speakers available nowadays IMO the best possible positioning of the speakers in the room is more important than the hardware itself.
I have my bookshelf speakers on stands on either side of my dual monitor setup, with some tweaking the soundstage is incredible. They are positioned how you describe it. Front baffle slightly in front of the monitors, tweeter at ear level, pointed just ever so slightly towards me but mostly front facing. It sounds awesome, just tested it by ear but its how you describe. Centre image is directly in the middle of my monitors. With music where theres a lot of depth or people are off centre you can clearly hear it. Its awesome!
Yes, absolutely. This solves a multitude of sins! I hate audiophiles who say the only resolve is to move the gear out of the room or build a dedicated room! It is like those people have never heard of apartments, or condos or townhomes or rented dwellings with lease rules or something.
Adjusted my speakers immediately. That's awesome!
Speaker, listener and acoustic diffuser placement together with simply avoiding hard surface reflection points too near to the listening position and between the speakers are all things vital to a quality hi-fi listening experience. A nicely matched system at 1000-2000 USD set up right in a good room will outperform nearly ANY other system (regardless of price) set up with poor placement and/or room interference (i.e. highly reverberating spaces or spaces with resonating walls or a ceiling when playing at moderate levels). There are so many audiophiles investing in expensive streamers or CD players to then hook them up to a seperate DAC via COAX or S/PDIF, expensive cables for small wattages, high-end audiophile furniture, you name it.. and still fail to get placement and the room right. All of the extra clarity/detail, soundstage and imaging a top-tier system can provide is lost when it does not get to the listeners ears do to phase cancellation, drop-off, etc.
Should have covered why this works. Some may not know why it works. Thank you , keep it coming.
The best thing i did for my 28 yo speakers was pulling the meter and checking the resistance on my bass woofers - as it turned out Rc was 14 ohm...no wonder they weren doing anything. Got a pair of used b&w woofers from reference series - off ebay bam! They sung sgain. After that i got curious - and got the reference drivers for mid ranges - new! Old stock cdm7nt drivers about $80 a piece- wow ! What a difference . While installing the woofers i stuffed about 2 small pillows worth of polyfill...wow again! After that i replaced old crossover caps with Dayton Audio film caps. One would wonder if spending around $400 on 28 yo speaker upgrades was worth it ....believe me it was. I even stopped looking at 702 S2's . These old bowers amaized me, soundstage blew me away...
Hi all. I have 2 floorstanders and put felt under de feet. When I'm just listening back ground music I leave them closer to the wall, but when I'm in serious listening mode I just slide them over my wooden floor to the ideal spot in the middle of the room en enjoy a great soundstage width and depth. Perfect solution for me!
Thanks!
I did this when Ron first posted his lots vid, I definitely found out the best placement but I still have to put everything back where it belongs when I’m done, I’ll call that exercise and we’re all good, thanks again Randy!
Just the other day I measured from the back wall (rt behind the couch) and put my speakers at equal distance off that wall (instead of front wall) And it made an improvement. My soundstage wasn't bad before but I found out the wall behind the speakers wasn't exactly linear. So id been measuring an equalateral triangle from the listening spot..but improvements were made after measuring off the back wall. I am unable to pull these 80lb monstrosities further into the living room, so LOTS isn't happening. I pulled my old Jolida FOZ SSX out of closet the other day, that thing can do some interesting things with the soundstage and bass. I had never used it before with my towers, it's kinda an amazing device.
It was kind of funny finding out that you and John Darko basically had nothing in common as far as musical tastes. I'm with you, I'm 66, an ex squid and I like metal.Thanks for the free tips. You ever notice that free beer or free lunch always tastes better?
Ron's L.O.T.S. video is amazing. I also like how you assess soundstage and imaging - that Chocolate Chip Trip track is AMAZING for this.
Thanks for your excellent tips Randy. The extra toe in definitely helped soundstage of my Wharfedale 12.1s
Great tips Randy!
Always worth the time to watch your videos.
Thanks!
Thanks for this information consolidation. All good advice. Much appreciated.
Many great tips, I learned about these work over the years
I sit myself onto my large, heavy, settee. I'll move that closer to the speakers if you volunteer to help me move it forward, then back. 😃 Informative video as usual.
Good job Randy!
Randy, this is a great video with fantastic advise. Thank you so much !
Also don’t forget to tilt up and down the speakers.
Usually tilt up will expose more the lower frequencies, and tilt down will expose more the higher frequencies.
In my case, I have the speakers seating on my desk, the lower frequencies were producing some distortion. Tilting them up reduced the issue… I believe the impact of those frequencies with the wooden table were reduced, minimizing this way the resulting distortion.
Tilting up or down depends on the height at which the speakers sit. It does not apply universally. Back in the day when we had huge bookshelf speakers that were not actually designed to be on a shelf, but rather on the floor they sold stands to put them on to tilt them up so that the tweeter would be aimed more at ones ear height, it helped indeed. Today though towers are generally situated to already have the tweeter at ear height when sitting and bookshelf speakers are made to where most can be stand mounted.
All great tips and they work well for a dedicated listening room but it would be nice if speaker designers would design speakers for the way most people have to use them. Most can’t pull them out more than a foot from the wall, for example.
It's been done before since the '70s. The most successful technically are the Allison range designed specifically with backs to the wall (2 reflecting surfaces), and I remember one has bass response tailored for room corners (3 reflecting surfaces). The modern solution is the port at the back of speaker, blocking off the port when up against wall to somewhat compensate for increased wall gain. We are where we are because of the long unresolved debate on room modes- the three primary modes of standing waves up-down left-right front-back will dominate the bass. There's recurring attempts to use digital signal processing to equalize out the peaks and troughs. I had experience with the pioneer system which employed a microphone at the listening position, it kinda works but it's not a panacea. It made really awful bass to just pretty bad. I haven't tried the new Dirac system yet for it's cost. My routine is start from speakers facing forward about 24" (d) from back wall, the math- quarter wavelength mode at about 50 hz is 1/4 (speed of sound/frequency), and not exactly the same as the bottom of speaker to floor dimension. Then the tiresome process of move them a little and jump back to hear the effect. USA is challenging because most rooms are multiples of four and eight feet. Yes there's a sweet spot, or a least bad compromise where the bass players comes alive more with less one-note/lumpy/woolly rhythm. Then I toe in speakers for image quality, normally the two best positions are square forward facing for best depth illusion (main vocal in front of drums); and the axis crossing just ahead of listening position for best image stability. I don't have money for superfi so life is in-between to minimize budgetfi speakers off center images vague and swimmy.
As for the issue of domestic harmony, I tried putting up full height bookshelves on the front wall and announced it need access space behind speakers. It only half worked (long story). The most success was to make it non negotiable, but that will not work for everyone.
@@BingLHuiI agree…there are a few companies that optimize for wall or corner placement (Klipschhorns, Audio Note UK and Larsen for example) but they are few and far between. And it’s true, most home designers never take acoustics into
consideration, even in family rooms or so-called media rooms. So at best, we are left with a compromise.
Zu DW6's sound fantastic, even better using these suggestions. Thank you for passing on the information.
You can increase treble by getting a different cartridge and for MM cartridges, change the capacitive loading at your phono preamp.
For example, an Audio Technica VM500 series tend to be a bit brighter and especially when loaded above 150pF.
Changing the cartridge costs money, but changing the capacitive loading is free! 👍
unitateral triangle - a triangle with one side!
I have speakers sprinkled all over the house. We downsized, it I didn’t sell any of them, so placement has been “creative”. One result of this is a pair of Klipsch LaScalas in a 10X10 office with my desk between them. They are in the corners towed in about 45 degrees. When sitting in the desk chair, the speakers are within 3 feet, but the intersection of the speaker faces would be behind me by a couple of feet. There is a subwoofer in another location. This room also is where crap in purgatory stays, so no reflective surfaces, carpeted floor, just a bizarre environment for these speakers. EXCEPT when I sit at my desk, instruments come from everywhere, but the vocalist is exactly in front of me. My theater rig with its center channel can’t do that nearly as well.
Yes, Ron did not invent L.O.T.S., but he did do a whole video explanation on it, which was good. I learned it from another source, but I don't know from where it originated. What I do know is that it really works in locking in the soundstage. The only thing is that one needs to figure out a compromise if one does not have a dedicated room (which 99% of us do not have) and depending on where one ends up. If it is easier to move the speakers to position every time one wants to listen to music, than that is the solve. If it is easier to move the seating position, than that is the solve. However, if neither one of those are doable, then it gets tricky as to compromise. However, this is also an area where room acoustical solutions may help mitigate a large compromise into a rather small compromise.
Moon Baby ! My favourite Godsmack song on that self titled cd.
Great tips. Always felt my Spendor. Fl10s were a bit over the top in upper mid range when toed in per usual recommendations. Listening to them off axis- oh my! Thanks
mission used to design their speakers to be used against the wall with no toe in & it worked very well, the only tweaking needed was closing/opening the distance between them. don't know about the current range.
For fear of not being offensive this is great advice if you have a dedicated room for music or if your are a sound engineer setting up a studio. This ain't gonna fly in the average living room I can assure you.
Careful with the speaker height. If you go too high or low from on axis ear level you'll get phase cancellation issues which will cause big dips in the midrange at the crossover point.
Depends on rake angle (not mentioned here) and also room height. There are simply too many variables involved to give any solid advice on speaker placement. It certainly can't be reduced to a calculation. It's all just trial and error.
I know 2 Chanel is the way if you are an audiophile but I build speakers and they all have different qualities I like so I enjoy hooking them all up to my avr and submerise myself in sound and I really enjoy it. I don't know why it still has to be 2 channel if you go to a concert they have speakers everywhere
Speakers at a concert are typically mono signals, but multi channel mono seems like the ideal setup for parties, bars, or clubs, where listeners are dancing, milling about, or seated at bars or tables. Like having two TV sets on in different rooms, phase variation among the speakers would suffice for a stereo effect.
@xxxYYZxxx I know it causes logging but if I set them up so they all around me it don't hear any combing effect and it actually sounds good to me anyway
I put my tube amp on timeout due to higher tube prices and bought the Vidar 2. Been having issues locking it in to what I’m used to. This video helped me get it perfect. Thank you. By the way I’m still waiting on your Vidar 2 review 😂.
On my 2 way speakers the harshness came from the mid/woofer’s crossover point around 12k. They’re now in storage and replaced. They were over 20 years old anyway.
You can also (TRIGGER WARNING) adjust your bass and treble according to how your room and speakers are sounding.
I find if I put my speakers in the corners on the wider end of the room I get maximum bass and if I move them closer to the center, it sounds more natural.
One more speaker adjustment is tilt. I adjusted mine with the stand spikes. This also helps align the timing between the faster high frequency waves and slower low frequency waves for non-concentric speakers. This theory is designed into speakers like Focal Grande Utopia.
Thats true in cases. Tilting angle is good as it can give a taller soind scale with the soundstage. But one has to be careful as a lot of speakers specially tweeters tend to have a pretty narrow disperssion pattern vertically. Id say look up info your spekar if you can find it and then try to tilt. In most case just an inch or incha and a half willl work wonders. In my setup with triangle Boreas 02 the tilt was very staisfying in conveying a more realistic size and location of singer and intruments .
Totally agree. A little goes a long way. My tilt was less than an inch higher on the front baffle. This moved the tweeter from ear level to about 4 inches above my ears. This widened my soundstage significantly with little negative impact to overall SQ.
My Audio Physic Sparks are designed with that rake/tilt angle built in. Best speakers I've ever had. Spookily holographic.
Randy, another way to boost treble is to add a pair of Aperion supertweeters.
Want to give my opinion. If you move a speaker out too far towards the listening position, you lose bass. It doesn't matter if it's a stand speaker or large floor model. You might win by how big the speaker sounds in depth and width. With one or possibly two subwoofer(s), this is less noticeable. Second aligning the speaker is a completely different story (toe in). This assumes that you have already found a good location but want to get the best out of it.
Hi Randy. Love these teaching shows. Have been a subcriber a long time. I allways toe in or out depending on speaker placement and room. Ifn your limited in space tone controls are best if you cant get off the wall. Try it you might like it.😅😅
My problem with my desktop system, I can’t move the desk that came with the house. Makes me very limited with the distance I can bring it out.
I used to have a computer that would limit the depth between my speakers.
Since I bought a DAC, I’ve been able to reduce that height of the blockage the computer screen was causing.
One more thing about my DAC. After installing my DAC, that’s when I noticed a large increase of soundstage.
Great tips. Thank you.
Not sure where to start with this one but for the sake of starting somewhere, I hope everyone noticed that the supposedly new placement recommendation also recommended an equilateral triangle between the speakers and the chair -- that's not what makes it different.
Cardas was advocating this approach long before the advent of equipment shill channels on RUclips and it's a bit galling that people are still treating it like their own (or someone else's) invention. Measure the distance across the front wall and call that distance "X". Now place the speakers in such a way that the center of the tweeter is 0.276X from the front wall and 0.276X in from the side. Then position your chair so that it is 0.446X from each tweeter. Toe the speakers enough so that they fire just barely over the outside edge of your outside shoulder.
Second, moving your chair closer to a pair of speakers near the front wall is a *terrible* idea. The reason is that you would be shaving the amplitude difference between the speaker's sound and the reflected sound off the front wall, which invites time-smearing. Don't do this. Ever.
Third, room gain and subwoofer response are not the same thing, for the simple reason that a subwoofer provides increased sound pressure evenly across all bass frequencies, while room gain only reinforces certain frequencies, and if the speakers are pushed back far enough toward the front wall to make an audible difference, it is guaranteed to reduce the time difference between the sound coming from the speaker and the sound coming from the wall, which will ruin detail resolution and soundstage.
The dude knows nothing 😂
Great stuff, thanks, helped a Lot ❤
Bob Robbins has a good video on speaker set up too.
I tried aiming my Polk ES 20 left and right speakers directly at my sitting position and found that the soundstage collapsed and even the center channel was less clear for movies. A little toe in sounded FAR better overall.
Do you disable the center channel listening to music?
@@joshdeakins1775 Yes
Lifted my chair up to the max for my KB tray. My creative Pebbles aim upward so being up higher is more direct. Ultra cheap audio.
Do speakers with passive radiators allow them to be closer to the wall? Moving speakers out from the wall or myself forward isn't feasible
My Forte IVs have passive radiators and they are in the recommended 8 to 12 inches from the wall and bass sounds best to me this way so I'd say yes. If I try the same with my rear ported Wharefedales they sound too boomy.
If I have a rear-ported speaker against the wall and then toe-in, will that wreak havoc with the bass/waves since they are no longer parallel to the walls?
For lack of treble, you can remove the upholstered furniture, rugs and curtains. Your wife will love it... ;/
Other disadvantage with moving them closer to the wall is you most likely loose depth in the sound stage
What I'm still missing after all these videos are tips how to get such a phenomenal beard.
What's your opinion about using blue tac to tighten the bass?
Why wouldn't the speaker be at either side giving a wider sound in the round
It’s 2023 and we have angled wing mirrors for a very long time, yet angling the front speaker cabinets eludes us. Omni sound things is as close as we got. Can’t be that difficult surely.
Thinking of getting into Metalica and Korn. What’s your recommended first album for both bands, Randy? Good video as always by the way!
When checking out an artist, I enjoy starting with the first album and hearing how they evolve throughout their collective musical journey. That being said, I recommend The Black Album from Metallica and any album from self titled to Issues for Korn. Personally, it's too hard to pick amongst their earlier work.
My wife had changed something in the living room that i had not noticed. So i put my speakers a bit furhter from the wall. I guess she has not noticed it yet...😂
She definitely will have noticed !!! 🔊
She will be saving this observation for a future argument 😂
Hahaha
I've tried pulling my speakers out from the wall and they don't sound as good. Much of the bass is lost. I can walk behind the speakers when they are pulled out and hear the bass I'm missing in front. They sound best against the wall and slightly toed toward the listening position.
Certainly some speakers, especially rear ported standmounts with small midbass drivers benefit from bass reinforcement from the wall.
Others hate being next to the wall and the bass gets bloated and muddy, swamping the mid range.
In my AV setup I have to have my front speakers right up against a wall so chose Fyne Audio speakers who have ports facing downwards to the floor. That solves the problem.
I have a weird audio illusion going on. My two speakers are about 12 feet apart. They are hooked to my TV. The TV is almost directly over the left speaker. The speakers are balanced for the center. I just watched your video on the TV and your voice seems to come from the TV instead of the center of the two speakers. What brain thing is causing that?
The most importent... Keep the speakers level..
It should be noted that although the things mentioned work for most speakers, some speakers are different. Klipsch heritage like to be against the wall in corners. Pull them out into the room and they sound terrible.
Hi love your channel. Have been following since inception! Owe my current emotiva setup to your excellent reviews. Any chance you will publish the 200k list of winners?
going to do a live stream with the winners probably.
So has everyone been notified already? Dont want to keep anxiously checking my mailbox 😅
Live stream tomorrow with winners who will be notified via email
Peanut butter and powdered sugar? Is that a thing? I’ve actually been plagued with years of desiring a peanut butter that was sweet like a Reese’s peanut butter cup which probably isn’t peanut butter at all. Hmmm you may have just helped me .
My speakers are too heavy to knock over, and it doesn't hurt them if kids tackle them . My sub weighs over 250lbs, on wheels, duodayton18s. My new open baffle duo 2in vertical on top center @ ear level 1meter from wall. I listen to you,sorta. I cheat, copy the high dollar stuff. New crossover and beston ribbons next. Please link me to Sith audio replacement Teflon eardrums , it's scary loud, hearing sound stage like never before similar to front array in my car installations.
My friends with 10 ,000 dollar systems look at the phone listen then leave in disbelief.
On your first "speaker placement", why don't you just sit closer to the speakers instead of moving them away from the wall?
I subscribe to any RUclipsr that uses the term “obelisk”.
Can’t towing wall in speakers
yeah. no. I have to live in my apartment, which also happens to be very small. This is way, way, way out of the realm of possibility for me. Finding any location for my speakers where they can be even remotely "symmetrical" from side and rear walls is already a challenge, putting them in the middle of the room is beyond absurd.
I far prefer your more reasonable, liveable recs = THANK you!
OK. That's the whole point. Do what works best for YOU, your situation, and your taste.
For many of us, these ARE "reasonable, liveable recommendations".
Be happy. Peace.
Towing speakers in would be called OFF ACCESS, keeping them straight on to your listening would be called ON ACCESS.
"Toeing", "axis" are the words you're looking for 😊
You made only one (but big) mistake: your (life-)time is not cheap, it's more precious than anything else! ☝
My speakers weigh 80 lbs each it is not easy to move them around
I know a lot of folks have super heavy speakers. sometimes furniture sliders can help to get them moved around and dialed in. Or put on your weight belt and drink 12 cups of coffee and get after it!
@@cheapaudioman lol
I'm in the same boat. Plus my wife is already bugging me about placement. She's always asking me why can't I put them closer to the wall..she would literally prefer it if I put them up against the wall.
@@cheapaudiomanI once wrote Emotiva about replacing their screw in feet on the T1 Towers with rolling casters. They kindly replied with precise measurements but then I moved so never put it into practice. The concern would be rattling by the casters but it seems that some casters are fairly silent.
@@NosEL34 The way mine are ported you can put them relatively close to the wall. My livingroom is small but my speakers are ginormous :)
Uh... equalizer...?
Now if only we could invent a hack to make wives and or girlfriends to STHU 🤫. With a snap of the finger. 🤞🤞
Did anyone win the 200k? What did they win?
Have I been mispronouncing Schiit all these years?
My wife and kids love my obelisks, not
Seems logical 🖖
First comment?
Stop
My wife got triggered by toe in
Get a new wife.
mic level too low on this.