Speaker placement/room set-up guide?
Is there a generic on-line guide or rule of thumb for placing speakers in a room? The time has come for me to set up my stereo in my new living room and I don't know where the correct places are to put the speakers and subwoofer. Any tips would be appreciated :)
Cardas speaker placement guide
Quote:
Originally Posted by R332
Is there a generic on-line guide or rule of thumb for placing speakers in a room? The time has come for me to set up my stereo in my new living room and I don't know where the correct places are to put the speakers and subwoofer. Any tips would be appreciated :)
Here's the famous Cardas speaker placement method ...
Note the variation for dipole speakers.
Most who've tried is say the results are great, but there is the big practical problem that the speakers, especially the non-dipole, have to be place a long way from the rear wall, e.g. a room with a 14' wide rear wall, speakrs are supposed to be 6.26' in front of it. :(
I began with that placement following my recent move
Quote:
Originally Posted by Feanor
Most who've tried is say the results are great, but there is the big practical problem that the speakers, especially the non-dipole, have to be place a long way from the rear wall, e.g. a room with a 14' wide rear wall, speakrs are supposed to be 6.26' in front of it. :(
and found optimum frequency balance with my bipolars was an arrangement using a slightly greater distance than the "standard" flavor. I spent a Sunday afternoon experimenting with 22 different combinations of speaker, listening couch and bass trap placement along with different bass contour settings on the backplates. I used a Radio Shack SPL meter and a Stereophile test CD recording ten readings for each trial in third octave increments from 200 hz down to 25 hz. In my dedicated 25' x 16' room, the stats ended up 7.5' out from the back wall. I achieved a +/- 2 db response from 60 hz to 200 hz with a gradual rise below that of a db or two down to 32. I find that getting the smoothest response in the lower midrange / upper bass is critical to neutrality. With the recommended Cardas bipolar position, I was getting a 16 db octave to octave difference between 60 hz and 120 hz. Dueling peaks and troughs. It sounded heavy.
I did the same with my HT system. There, however, I ignored the Cardas distance to back wall recommendation (I used about 3') and balanced the mains crossover on the receiver and powered subs crossover and level to achieve a neutral response. Surprisingly (at least to me), I ended up using the lowest crossover settings for both (40 hz on the receiver and 50 hz on the subs) with a judicious level control on the subs with my Polk RTi-35 mains (6.5" woofer) and Eosone 12" subs. I actually removed a Behringer third octave EQ from the mix with the placement in its new room. It really wasn't needed. This experience reinforced my belief that most folks crank their subwoofers beyond flat.
Bipolars are definitely trickier to place since the room becomes the enclosure. With any speakers, however, my advice is experiment, experiment, experiment. Ideally using some test gear (which doesn't have to be expensive).
rw