lejonklou wrote: ↑2019-01-10 22:56
What speakers do you have, Defender? Your positions sound odd to me. Very few speakers end up so far from the rear wall and they also seem too far apart.
I have written several articles about how to optimally install loudspeakers, some of which I'm rather proud. A few of them were published in Scandinavian magazines and I believe the longest and best was a series of articles in the magazine Hemmabio (no longer in print). In that series I went through all the speakers in a home cinema system - centre, left and right, subwoofer and surround channels and how to optimally position them. The only problem with this series was that the whole procedure required the reader to be able to listen, compare and decide whether it was better or worse. And who actually mastered that? I didn't mention the Tune Method (in which case it might not have been published), but I tried describing how to follow a melody and judging by the ease with which you could understand the music, etcetera. In retrospect I believe that a real, practical demonstration of the Tune Method is what had been needed to understand it all. Consequently I received very little feedback from the readers.
If you haven't learned the Tune Method well, I recommend that you ask a friend or a nearby forum member for help. Tuning your own system is always
much harder than helping someone else. And if you're two, it often becomes more fun and much easier. No scheme will ever help, regardless of how clever or advances, if you don't know how to listen for a quick decision. It's
absolutely essential to be able to tell better from worse!
In general I would try installing the speakers against the longer wall in a rectangular room. I would also try to get an unbroken wall, that is no door openings or windows or large cabinets. It's also good if the speakers don't have any big furniture in between them. If they can't "see" eachother, they get lonely and start playing individually instead of together.
Having a reasonably unbroken wall behind the speakers makes them get good support from the room. This wall needs to be steady and non resonant! Timber is good. Stone is good. Plaster with a cavity behind is
terrible. If you bump your fist into the wall at various places, you will hear what will be added to your music. How other walls, doors, windows etc resonate is important as well, but the rear wall I usually find has the strongest influence.
Practical considerations might decide where you can put your speakers along the chosen wall. There are two methods of how to tune the speaker positions here, one I call the symmetrical and the other I call the asymmetrical method. The symmetrical method is easier and that's the only one I will mention in this text.
A symmetrical position along the rear wall is the best. That is; both speakers are equally far from their respective side walls
or from openings in the rear wall. Now, using the Tune Method, you adjust:
1. Distance to rear wall (by ‘rear wall’ I mean the wall behind the speakers). Start close, make some jumps, I often do 10, 20, 30, 40 cm. Continue past the point where you felt it got worse. This is the hard part, because right now everything is wrong! Be patient and methodical, it will get easier later on.
2. Make the changes smaller. If you've settled for 30 cm, try it against 25. If 30 is still better, try 35. If 35 is better, start moving 1 cm at a time. Then 0.5 cm. That's good enough for now.
3. As the position is symmetrical, now adjust the distance apart. Did you start with 1.6 m in between each speaker? Try 1.5 and 1.7. Maybe even more? Move both speakers at once (symmetrical, right?) and keep the distance from the rear wall the same. Now it's good to be two doing the work
and the listening! Tune the distance apart down to 0.5 cm.
4. When distance apart has been optimised, it's now time to test
Toe In. If you are short of time, skip this step! I find that in about 95% of installations, toe in should be zero. There are exceptions, however, so if you have the time, it's worth testing. The point around which a loudspeaker rotates while remaining at the optimal distance from the rear wall and from the other speaker is the centre of the woofer, where the dustcap is. When you try toe in, rotate the speaker around this point. And take really small steps! A tiny angle, with a few mm more on one side of the cabinet than the other against the rear wall, often has a very strong effect. If it's worse than no toe in, try a little more. Continue until you get an idea of what toe in does - musically! Often it "smears" the sharpness of the bass notes and in some cases, this is better. Often it's not. The music will tell you.
5. If Toe In was better, you will need to keep track of the difference between inner corner and outer corner of the cabinet - to keep the amount of toe in constant. Otherwise you keep the speakers straight. Now redo step 3 and step 2, this time fine tuning them further. First do the distance apart, at least down to a quarter of a cm. Sometime those last mm gives the greatest AHA!-moments. Then do the distance against the rear wall - and here, you do the speakers one at a time! First the left and then the right. The rear wall might not be straight and you might end up with left and right speaker having a slight difference in their distance against rear wall.
Now you should be smiling from ear to ear and have problems sitting still when music is playing. There are more things to tune - isn't there always? - but today you've done enough. Have fun!