How exotic(whacked) is your speaker placement?

[AMPaul]

Hi all, i just wanted to share my experience and ask about yours. So i have a pair of Quad S2 and given they aren't that big i consider them pretty versatile. I am a sound stage guy first and foremost so i spent a lot of time tinkering and placing them. I ended up with them placed on isolation foams angled 20degree upwards (at about 26inch height). Given that my living room is more like a rectangle, they ended up on the short wall (the ceiling is pretty tall for a flat in the UK- 9 feet), but at different distances from the back wall (one is 16 inch the other at 12 inch), with slightly different toe ins; and that is the position where i like the sound the best, where everything is in phase and center image shar with good soundstage. It feels weird to my brain as i look at them but during the evenings the music is amazing and don't care too much where they are placed.

How weird/assymetric are your speaker setups?

 

[puppet]

But your listening position is based off the placement ... right? If the time of flight is not symmetrical I'd be inclined to think that both loudspeakers SPL aren't matched up are you're compensating for that.

 

[Wes]

My speaker setup is asymmetric, tho not assymetric. I have Maggie 3.7i "planars" in an open design room with lots of glass.

The RH speaker is set so it fires into a sort of alcove with about 7-8 ft. of open space behind it.

The LH speaker fires into a large picture window but I put the tweeters on the inside so the tweeter fires into drywall with "mud" on it (about 2 or 3 mm sized "ridges"). There is another large picture window at 90o. I use a fake ficus behind the LH tweeter to further disperse HF sound, but adding it made no noticeable change in sound with casual listening.

The giant black thing is a brick fireplace. Black circle is main listening spot. Maggie tweeters are ~ 6.5 ft. apart.

 

[Wes]

old pic - center table, electronics & TV have changed; ficus not shown either

The ceiling slopes up from the wall to ~~ 10 ft. at listening spot.

 

[Slayer]

old pic - center table, electronics & TV have changed; ficus not shown either

The ceiling slopes up from the wall to ~~ 10 ft. at listening spot.

View attachment 137373

Hey Wes, if it sounds good to you and works for your space, then who cares if someone thinks they may be placed wrong.
All the so called speaker set-up, placement guidelines, to me are just a starting point. Then user tweaking is usually needed. One would be hard pressed to find someone with the same layout and speakers to then try and tell you where they should be placed.
If it sounds good where you have them, Rock on and enjoy.

 

[Wes]

Thx - the real issue is can they sound better? and... what effort or cost would be needed to make them sound better?

Like the OP mine are on the short wall. I rejected the idea of blocking entry areas to the room or sitting inside the fireplace to listen...

The OP has his Quads sitting on foam which may throw off many people at first, but I've heard of people who are rapturous when they hung their Quads from beams - all pointing up that planar speakers are little affected by Doppler effects from high SPL.

 

[AMPaul]

my original intention was to show that rooms matter and for the given conditions speakers wont be set up like in showrooms - equidistant same toe ins same distance from back wall, etc...one would end up with wonky looking speaker placement but which sounds amazing from where they are listened to. i believe people are so obsessed with symmetry that their soundstage/imaging actually suffers.

 

[Hipper]

Hey Wes, if it sounds good to you and works for your space, then who cares if someone thinks they may be placed wrong.
All the so called speaker set-up, placement guidelines, to me are just a starting point. Then user tweaking is usually needed. One would be hard pressed to find someone with the same layout and speakers to then try and tell you where they should be placed.
If it sounds good where you have them, Rock on and enjoy.

This is exactly correct (same applies to house curves for DSP/EQ).

The speakers mentioned so far are electrostats and with their bipolar radiation pattern their behaviour is different to conventional speakers. Even amongst electrostat users it seems that there is no agreement on how to deal with this - absorb the rear radiation or consider it an asset.

I have an almost square room with copious room treatment and EQ. My speakers are floorstanding VMPS RM30M - front and side firing bass cones with ribbon tweeters and mids. I started with 'The Thirds' positioning and ended with a slight adjustment based on measurements, and a certain amount of toe in achieved by experimentation. It looks silly because firstly, when I sit in my chair with my feet up, those feet are almost between the two speakers and secondly, because the distance from my ears to the drivers is about 1.6 metres and the speakers are quite large.

Silly or not, it sounds good to me!

 

[AMPaul]

This is exactly correct (same applies to house curves for DSP/EQ).

The speakers mentioned so far are electrostats and with their bipolar radiation pattern their behaviour is different to conventional speakers. Even amongst electrostat users it seems that there is no agreement on how to deal with this - absorb the rear radiation or consider it an asset.

I have an almost square room with copious room treatment and EQ. My speakers are floorstanding VMPS RM30M - front and side firing bass cones with ribbon tweeters and mids. I started with 'The Thirds' positioning and ended with a slight adjustment based on measurements, and a certain amount of toe in achieved by experimentation. It looks silly because firstly, when I sit in my chair with my feet up, those feet are almost between the two speakers and secondly, because the distance from my ears to the drivers is about 1.6 metres and the speakers are quite large.

View attachment 137909

Silly or not, it sounds good to me!

that is one heck of a room. i have a question: are you married?

 

[raindance]

The Quad S2 is not an electrostatic speaker (and neither is any Magnepan speaker), FYI. The Quad is a small bookshelf with a ribbon tweeter and a BBC-style bass bump around 100Hz. Stereophile liked them.

 

[Hipper]

that is one heck of a room. i have a question: are you married?

What do you think!!!!

 

[mononoaware]

After a few months of adjustments in a small room since purchasing, I arrived at a much lower position than average.

If you walked into the room one could ask “how come your speakers are so close to the floor?”.
It also helps my typical listening position is sitting on the corner of the bed and leaning on the ottoman (spine twisted).

There are so many odd shaped rooms with odd layouts and listening position habits, so it is absolutely understandable there can be odd speaker position placement.

 

[Geoffkait]

Without some methodology like XLO Test CD with a track for speaker placement or similar disc finding the absolute best locations for any speakers in any room is very very challenging. It’s like trying to solve x equations in x + n unknowns. The move a little listen a little technique that is quite common doesn’t obtain the absolute ideal locations, only local maximums.

”The more diffuse the sound is when out-of-phase the more focused the sound will be when it’s in phase. When out-of-phase (polarity) the sound should sound like it’s coming from all around you, with no particular direction.“