Distance between Front Speakers...

[ThreeDHomer]

I am about to redo the room that my system is in. I had a great layout that would look good and sound better, but the wife axed my idea. She has come up with building a cabinet like structure in the corner of the room. She is pretty dead set on it....Anyway, I am willing to compromise, but am worried under this condition the fronts would be about 5 ft apart from each other. It is a small room (around 12 lf deep) and a modest system, and the set up will not be optimal ever, but how much performance will I lose with speakers this close together? Any? All? We are talking about bookshelf fronts by the way.

[woodman]

If you're sitting 10-12 feet away, you'll LOSE a "soundstage" ... in other words, no stereo sound at all - just mono! Do your best to convince your wife otherwise - else you might as well have all monaural equipment. All of your stereo sound gear will be for naught! In order to hear stereo, the speakers need to be as far apart as your listening position is from them. In other words, an equilateral triangle with the two front speakers and YOU being at the corners of such a triangle. There's a little leeway in these measurements, but not much.

Hope this helps you -

[yamdsp-a1]

One and a half. If your speakers are 10 ft apart, you should be 15 ft away. That is the rule I use anyway, it could be completely wrong but I thought my speaker manual said that. I would hate to think I have this backwards - My speakers are 10 feet apart and I sit 15 ft away. Hope I shouldn't be sitting 7 ft away...

Yam

[kexodusc]

I've always heard and read the equilateral triangle method is best, but to experiment a few inches or feet here and there...Woodman is right though, too far back and you will compromise your system. I would think 1.5 times might be a bit excessive...but each speaker is different.
And to confuse you further, the recommendations for stereo listening and Home Theater speaker placement are different, so another compromise may be required (although I've found the loss of effect minimal in HT).
Factor in "toe-in", and proximity to walls, and speaker placement gets even more complex.
The best thing to do is put on a good jazz CD or LP with a clear female voice and ask your wife politely to adjust the speakers for you while you try to optimize their placement...since she's inconveniencing you, she won't mind, right (let me know how far you get with that).
I've been fighting with my speaker placements for 2 months now...it's amazing how much difference even a quarter of an inch can make.
Good luck.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

If you are referring strictly to a stereo system, then woodmans advice is correct. However if you system is 5.1, then these recommendation are for the optimal setup. <img src="http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan01/images/surround2.gif">

Any system that strays from the recommended setups will offer a degraded stereo(or 5.1) imaging. Cabinet like setups also compromise imaging by introducing stray reflections. These reflections can and often do seriously alter the tonal structure of the signals coming from the speakers. This can often muddy dialog, and (or) cause images to end up in places they were not mixed for.

I will tell your wife that it is a waste of money to invest in a 5.1(or stereo) system and set it up improperly. Ask her to work with you with regards to proper placement AND asthetics.

[kexodusc]

Great pic Sir Terence. How does one most easily go about measuring the angles? Trigonometry? Using a compass? Or guesstimating?
Also, the image suggest aiming the speakers directly at the focal listening point, is this amount of toe-in adviseable?

[joel2762]

I'm ashamed to say that in my house we have a corner entertainment unit, It's like 4 ft wide. Speaker n each side. Bookshelves. on the floor. Sound is ok but I know it could be greatley improved using the old setup where there was a larger wide cabinet along the front wall.Listening distance is about 8 ft. Not the best stereo image but that's all I can do. Try as hard as you can to get them farther apart.

[Smokey]

If the optimum distance between speakers jeopardies the speaker distance to side walls (too close), Then you might have to make some compromises as side walls dictate the timing of reflections that reaches your ear.

I have 3 feet distance between side walls and speakers, 7 feet between speakers and 9 feet distance between sitting position and speakers. Also play around with speaker's toe in or toe out. My speakers sound best looking straight ahead-rather than toe them in slightly toward listening area.

[ThreeDHomer]

I wonder if she would go for that? Just make a bigger room. Well I think what we will do is remove a door panel and have the fronts on each side of the room, roughly 10 feet apart. It brings in danger of people knocking over the speaker, and they will be close to the side walls, but seems a better lay out. Thanks a ton!