Ah the ringing in the ears! The Who Dec 7th 1968 Bristol Uni, my hearing top end dropped from 22KHz down to 17KHz and never came back (we were doing audio experiments including many, many hearing tests).
Speakers. There are many books on the topic. However it can be summed up in a few simple sentences based on common sense and experience.
Don’t put them right in the corners of the room (avoid resonances and standing waves); about a foot away from the side wall is a good rule of thumb, back wall depends on the speaker - it might have a rear port needing breathing space.
Put them roughly equidistant from your normal listening position - with nothing in the way.
Make sure the tweeters and mid range are at about your ear height when in your normal listening position.
Aim the tweeters at your normal listening position - bass and subs don’t matter on aim.
If using a sub make sure it can be adjusted separately because its volume goes all over the place depending on position - quieter in the centre of the room, louder tight up against a wall (exercise for the student - work out why)
If you have really good speakers the manufacturer will also supply a guide on the best placements, because they know how the sound comes out of the speaker and how the surroundings affect it.
Not all of us can have an ideal shape of listening room, but look up the “Golden Ratio”, because this is what to aim for, and it should be free of clutter and hard surfaces. Curtains and carpets help a lot.
Multiple speakers can be a really good thing. My surround system (while not ultimate hifi) surprised me (a cynical hifi nut) by how good it is, and it was relatively cheap (and on offer from Az right now). No soundbar ever made can even begin to compete with a genuine multi-speaker surround system.
I was led to believe many years ago that speakers should be facing forwards. The reason given was that with the tweeters aimed towards the listener the sound stage would only be between the speakers. With the tweeters aimed forwards the sound stage would extend out beyond the speakers.
The manufacturer of my speakers (columns with the tweeter directly above the bass unit) advise on max/min distances between columns and min distances from rear and side walls, they also say that the columns should face straight ahead, not inclined or directed inwards as so many seem to think is proper. Just my manufacturer? Dunno! Just repeating what they recommend with their speaker systems.
Having now Googled the subject and looked at various manufacturer websites and other sources nobody can really agree!
Here’s what I think seems to be the general consensus. In a perfect listening listening room you will have a pair of speakers spaced away from the side and rear wall. You will have non-reflective walls, ceiling and flooring. You will have one chair positioned in the room equidistant from the speakers. You should then toe in the speakers so they are aimed to a point immediately behind the head of the listener in that chair.
Who lives in a perfect world?
Move away from the chair or let anyone else into the room and they don’t get the best sound. Pointing the speakers directly forward means you will get reasonable sound wherever you are in the room.
Alternative solution is to listen to one of the many DAB broadcasts which use mono transmission to save on expensive bandwidth. Then you can put your speakers wherever you like. Just use one if you like.
Aiming tweeters.
It depends on the size of the room, its width to length proportions and the angle to the listener(s). The field of fire from most tweeters is usually about 90 to 120 degrees, so if facing forward there can be a hole in the middle between the speakers when closer to them and you also get an echo or phase effect off the wall beside it. If aimed towards a normal listening position about 2/3 the way back from the speakers then (generally) more of the room is covered with a cleaner sound. (Exercise for the student - mount the speaker near a door as an occasional side wall, and have someone move the door while you listen to the sound.)
If the manufacturer says where to put his speakers, then do so, because they will have tuned the response to work better this way, it will smooth out the bass. Ideally there should be an an-harmonic ratio in the spacing across the room, to prevent overtones or resonances on the bass notes from reflections off the walls and the other speaker etc.
The disadvantage of sticking speakers nice and tidy, tight in a corner or against a wall, is that this can produce stronger eigentones across the room, especially if there is a strong reflection off the far end of the room.
Unfortunately, correct placement of nice big speakers (no substitute for litres if you want real bass) is less tidy and often causes distaff trouble. ‘Tidiness’ is one of the reasons I cannot use my ancient (1958) Quad speakers.
So my hifi (not the surround system) is a compromise, with ancient (1966) and patched up speakers designed to be hidden in a bookcase, effectively invisible and they don’t get in the way of a vacuum cleaner. And being at the end of the room tight among heavy books they face forward, and they are below ear height and there is often a chair in the way (it moves around), but there are no resonances and there is a thick curtain available for the whole of the other end of the room, and the sound is crystal clear with smooth even bass.
I don’t listen to DAB, I can hear it working, even in a (quiet) car.
The TV digital audio for the various radio channels has twice the bit budget and a better coding system.
At least I can’t hear FM radio working.
Snag, all “radio” of any kind is so heavily compressed anyway it’s not really worth listening to, except maybe the news and traffic info.
I used to listen to a local commercial radio station. Good music choice, entertaining presenters and it sounded great. Then all of a sudden, overnight the whole sound of the station output was compressed within an inch of it’s life and sounded terrible.
I don’t know for certain because I’m well out of the loop now, but at the time we speculated this was to take most of the music above the point where so many people complained they could hear the DAB working (it is so obviously nothing like “CD quality”). DAB2 has lowered this threshold, but in the trials before I retired I could still hear it switching.
I’m sure the positioning of Hi-Fi speakers is going to be a compromise for most people - as I’m also sure that most people will not be lucky (!) enough to have a dedicated music room, where everything can be located for optimum listening pleasure.
More often than not, the speakers have to go where other household furniture and fittings dictate.
I try to position mine a couple of feet off the floor, so that low-sitting soft furnishings, such as carpets and sofas etc do not absorb all the high frequencies, but other than that, in my experience, the household authorities tend to not like speakers dominating the room space.
Anyway, as far as ‘optimum listening pleasure’ is concerned, how many of us can truly say that their ears can tell the difference between optimum and not. As I say, most of us have to compromise !
Not sure why you need an “earth”, unless of course you have “active” speakers that are “powered”, ie connected to the main with their own power supply. On conventional speakers twin core speaker cable is the correct choice (multiples thereof if bi-wiring or bi-amping). I previously used Chord Rumour 2 and currently Chord Epic.
Sorry I’ve not been on here recently and thanks to all who are keeping this thread rolling, I really mean it, without you, this thread would have died long ago!
Very, very interesting to read about speaker positioning, I’ve always had speakers at an angle so they intersect at roughly my seating position, fair enough I thought. However, I tried them facing straight forward, parallel with the side walls today. This has actually improved things noticeably. I’ve done a short video which is actually quite useless in demonstrating this but here it is anyway.
Hi Barrie. Glad to see you back again! Your experiment seems to confirm what my speaker maker recommends - straight ahead.
PS: Now where did I put my Dave Brubeck LP?!?!?!
Hi Roger,yes and the CHORD cable is brilliant, it also makes a difference! TBH, part of my abstinence is down to the new website. BUT… I would never have been able to put a video up so easily before so maybe it’s not as bad as I make out!
True Barrie! Notice, I’ve not only posted photos of my Garrard TT, but now also have an avatar, which I’ve changed back and forth just for the fun of it, neither of which I could do on the old forum!
? Twin & earth anyone?
