Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Speaker Setup?

You guys have any interest in a master speaker/room setup thread?

Might be useful for advanced members who wish to nudge the ball a few yards further.

Yes.

I would, but I am already pretty active in some other advanced level groups and forums talking about acoustical design, home theater design, sound energy measurement, etc (some are invite only which means there is a certain level of expectation on number of useful posts and comments). Not sure that I have time to start another. I could chime in from time to time though.

That brings up a really good point! A pool of resources.

We should try to keep the thread to succinct strategies and cite references when possible.

Keep the “noise” to a minimum. Lol. (Loudspeaker pun) Anecdotal is valuable if pictures and specific procedures are included. Brevity is appreciated. Quality over quantity.

Anticipating good (structured, presented and cited) input from all interested!

Fire away. How do you all set up your speakers?

Anyone into this besides Tex?

It will be some work to do it properly is all. If the thread dies after a super post it will be a kick to the nuts. Lol.

I'm not planning on contributing. I'm not an "advanced member". I'm just a member...with a member...and sometimes I am referred to as a member. I was just planning on reading it and learning.

I consider anyone that has a seat they consider the “mlp” an advanced member.

If you are geeky enough to use abbreviations like me you are in the club.

I have two MLPs so I guess I'm pretty advanced.

Bring the info. As far as I'm aware it's extremely easy just time consuming.

Play the track Ballad of the Runaway Horse by Jennifer Warnes loudly. Just first 20 seconds on loop any format is sufficient.
Put speakers against chosen wall listen then begin to move speakers in 1 or 2 centimeter increments listening each movement.
As you go you will find multiple spots where each note is distinguishable. Mark them.

Pick desired or most practical spot and the fun begins.
From here 1mm increments back and forth listening for sound stage and centering. To far you'll lose it, not enough and so on. Supposedly most will find only about half a centimeter for a chosen location.

Some rooms cannot possibly get perfect imaging due to design constraints. This technique should get you damn close or to the most ideal for a given room situation.

Sorry I've been studying this for a bit

Yup. That's what I did. Took me 6 months to dial them in. Then had to do it all over again once I upgraded the first time. Then 5 times more after the next 5 upgrades. Almost hung myself...by my member.

Forgot to mention that's one speaker at a time. Playing stereo no subs. Fine detail only needed on second speaker.
It's a good pass time and gives you the most optimal placement really helps to the go around the best stereo one can get.

More!

Then I had to do it in the living room after spending 13 years torturing myself in the basement.

Takes me an hour or so. 6 months?!

Thats like million monkeys on typewriters.....

Teasing. More!

I can get 99.8% if the way there in the first 7 minutes. The other 262,793 minutes is to dial them in.

So what kind of results have you had from this. Are they really worth it for you?

Takes me a couple hours. The millimeter bit is an S.O.B.
My Livingroom is open to rest of house mostly so peaks and nulls show and confuse me like nuts. Need a couple B.C. greens and lots of calm.
But through the headache it gets pretty close to the perfect holograph this is supposed to achieve.

The effort is really worth it. Come feel my biceps.

I can imagine
The perfect stereo placement with those LFRs must be utterly awesome everywhere.
A good cheat to this method is to use a bookshelf.
Being this goes too look for the most efficient spot in desired location. Once you have the spot marked or memorized. can speed up the process a lot

No, using a bookshelf does not substitute for a larger speaker with more drivers. The radiation pattern and room interaction is completely different. I've tried all the speakers in my sig in at least two different rooms and they all ended up in different spots.

Can you be specific with how larger vs smaller speakers trend in your room. Did a pattern emerge? (Hint)

I can tell you what I observed although admittedly I didn't really approach it like a science project.

In general, I found larger speakers, with more drivers, need a bigger room and a greater MLP. Larger rooms do not necessarily need larger speakers. If you want to sit 12 feet away from your fronts, M2s are good enough with good subs like the 500s even in a 4,200 cu. ft. space like mine. In a 2,000 cu. ft. living room, floor-standers are a total waste of money and will give you more problems. This goes for music and movies but I will tell you that active LFR1100s add a lot to movies. I could not say that about M100s vs. M2s as fronts.

-- Bass --

Any passive floor-standing or bookshelf had attenuated bass response when moved away from the boundaries. No surprise there. In my living room, the M2s were the only ones that played non-bloated bass. M50s were a somewhat close second. In the basement, the bass response was good from all passives as long as they were moved into the room a few feet. They all still needed XT32 correction.

The actives are very different. I didn't notice any bass bloat at all. Quite uncanny actually. I suppose maybe they were tuned for boundary placement but even so, when I move them away from the boundaries, the bass does not change. Not sure how this could be. Also the actives don't need any XT32 correction. There is no difference between corrected and uncorrected to my ears.

-- Imaging/Soundstage --

The M2s were the easiest to image out of any passive. I found as I moved into larger speakers, it was more and more difficult to image and I had less degrees of freedom. Ultimately, for the best imaging and soundstage, they all need to be into the room, forming an equilateral triangle with the MLP. You can move the MLP closer to hear more of the speakers rather than the room. I find this too "in your face". You can move the MLP further if you want to experience the soundstage as if you are more "in the audience". This is how I prefer it.

The actives are quite different. In my living room, I really could not get soundstage width beyond the speaker boundaries. I was sitting 10 feet away and they were 10 feet apart. The size of the actives was getting in the way. The M2OW are far better in that regard. In my living room, I am giving nothing up with the M2OW compared to the active LFRs. Yes, the bass out of the actives in the living room was something else entirely but what I have, with my two crappy subs and the M2s, is very satisfying also. The basement is a different story because I am sitting 14 feet away and the actives are 12 feet apart. They're only a foot into the room. The size doesn't get in the way there, and with well-recorded material, they completely disappear acoustically. They really don't need perfect recordings. Yes, music with them is amazing but it's the movies that totally surprised me. No center needed and the experience can't be matched even with the M100s.

It's the first time in 13 years, and I am no longer wanting more out of my speakers and subs. It took a hell of a lot of experimenting, and money, to get here.

That matches my experience very closely although M5HP's are also "no bloat" at the distances I was able to space them from the wall. M2's, M3's and Sierra-1's were all perfect in terms of imaging and tight bass but had other shortcomings (it's a BIG room).

This is with ~1.5 bales of rockwool set up as bass traps, which improved bass response so much that I should probably double that at least and experiment with other materials as well.

I am not expecting the same kind of insanely wide imaging from the LFR's that I can get with current speakers when everything is set up just right, but I expect to enjoy the wider sweet spot more than enough to make up for that.

Your comments about the bass from the actives are encouraging - my one nagging concern has been the obvious "if I have clearly preferred bookshelf speakers over towers in any room I have lived in for a duration, why the heck did I buy LFR1100's ?".

The actives will give you wide soundstage provided you place them wide apart and either sit close or far. Here's what I mean by that.

They're 12 feet apart in my main room. If I sit 15 feet away, I get width. If I sit 8 feet away, I get width. But 8 feet away is like you're sitting at the edge of the stage. 15 feet away is like the stage is further away. If I sit somewhere in between those distances, it's like the actives get in the way of themselves. Of course these dimensions are room-dependent. There is some ratio of distances though that result in less than optimum soundstage performance.

You bought actives because you're curious...as am I. But bigger is definitely not necessarily more enjoyable. It depends on the room and their position and your position within it.

K. I'll get something started.

This is great. It would be awesome if Andrew shared his setup strategy. His vids are great but don't really get into any specifics.

Having fun reading all your experiences.

More!

I'm not sure why everyone assumes that speaker designers know how to set speakers up in a room and tweak a room. That's a science and practice all on its own. Trevor, I'd lay money down you know more than Andrew in this regard. That's not a knock on Andrew.

Speaker designers have to embrace a design "standard". That standard helps them build product regardless of the room the product is placed in. That standard for Axiom is Toole's research. Axiom has interpreted the science behind that research and adopted that interpretation within its Family of Curves. Over time, it has adjusted its understanding of the curves and the design parameters that lead to greater accuracy for the specified operating boundaries of a particular speaker.

What Axiom has done with its FOCs signifies a very mature level of requirements. These requirements are used to design speakers and the components within them. Without them, a speaker designer is free to design to his own requirements, and those requirements likely won't be valid in the markets the speakers sell in.

The actives prove to me that a highly accurate FOC works very well. Room integration as a result becomes easier. Now hopefully Trevor can make it easier for all of us by spilling some secret methods.

Naw, I think he probably has a kick butt setup and room that we would all strive for.

His collection of music is damned impressive if it fills a room!!

I feel I have two terrific rooms as well but I am not sure I am an authority. I am led to believe I am another "a" word.

When I'm invited to friends' homes, I give them a few tips about their speaker set-ups, and invariably the dudes want to give my ideas a try. They are astounded with the result and exclaim "Honey, come listen to this". The wife comes into the room, looks absolutely horrified with the re-configuration, glares at me, raises her hand, points at me with her index digit and declares, "You're an asshole!"

Don't worry, you can be both !

That's the wisest thing I've heard all week.

I was hunting around for styles of presentation that others have used and found this. Its pretty good and I agree with most of it. I use other formulas though.

Mine will be blog style and have pics I think. Easier to digest that way.

https://www.gcaudio.com/tips-tricks/speaker-placement/

You may want to look at Blogger.

I suppose that blog you linked to is good for total newbies. I am hoping you have some real gold for us all. You know...like if you place a paperclip just like this on the top of a speaker, it'll be like the performers folded space and showed up in your room.

Lol. No such luck. The reason no one has any "tricks" like that to share (I know you are kidding) is because all the tweaks and stuff are fringe that bear no scientific or objective improvements.

The stuff I will share is good. And practical. And no hocus pocus. And probably most important cost nothing. Everyone can do it. It involves proper and symmetrical alignment in room, on the room's least volatile points of bass excitement for both speakers and listener, using a line laser. Pretty easy and I use the method in every setup I do. Most people don't realize there should not be a single holographic singer and 2 speakers. A wall of sound... even out of bookshelves. Interaural Cross Correlation. Read up on it. In small rooms the devil is in the details and symmetry is abundantly important for the direct sound.

When you boil it all down it's not magic. Nothing I will tell you is anything not already in a textbook if you link the nuts and bolts together.

I will tell you that if you haven't tightened all of your drivers and terminal plate you should. No 1 source of system distortion is loose drivers and very common with factory speakers. Even a little bit of a turn can make a difference. I often get a half turn or more out of speaker fasteners. Cough.... ELAC.

You should also try to use anti ox compound on bare wire terminations (the yucky grey stuff with metal filings in it)

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ideal-NOALOX-4-oz-Anti-Oxidant-Compound-30-026/202276208

or solder in the case of banana connectors. I use these and put solder in to the tip after tightening the screw.

https://www.parts-express.com/parts...pe-banana-plugs-14-8-awg-16-pcs--091-354

I will also say without question that not using speaker spikes in favour of pads or isolation platforms is really dumb. Like using a Sawzall supported by a pool noodle..... Wasting energy.

I get a wall of sound out of my speakers including bookshelves and on-walls while maintaining holography. It's pretty cool and I really like it. I like to "see" those images.

All things loose on the Axioms have been factored into the design.

Do I need speaker spikes for carpet? I haven't installed my out-riggers on the LFRs yet but when I do, should I use spikes for the carpet?

Good tips.

I forgot to mention, on my Dreamcatchers, there are purple pasties pasted on by Totem just above each tweeter. I've screwed with listeners using those. I tell them I can make the speakers sound warmer with red pasties and cooler with blue pasties. They invariably agree when I make the changes.

Yes spikes in carpet. You want your speakers anchored in place so they transfer all their energy to moving air and not moving themselves.

Any energy transfered into cabinet kinetic energy is wasted. Most mass is in woofers. They stand to lose the most in the equation.

Agreed. I wonder how consequential that really is. I'd like to see data. I just want to understand the relative magnitude.

Regarding the driver mounting bolts, I'm worried about turning them too much. They ought to have torque specs.

Speaker Setup – Step 1. Choosing a Room

This may seem like a basic given, but what room layout you choose is as important (if not more so) as the loudspeakers you put in it. Fantastic speakers in a cranky room will result in a bottleneck you can’t do anything about. So, how do we choose a room that is amenable to great sound? In the following examples I ripped apart my listening room at home and started from scratch. Practice what I preach, right?

1. Choose a room that you enjoy spending time in already. Our perception of sound, and the dopamine response we get from enjoying music should go hand in hand with other stimulants that do the same. Forget all the don’ts out there that say windows are forbidden. We can deal with those issues later. Natural light is a huge plus and will lend itself to spending time in the room. Mood is paramount to enjoying good sound. Good sound also creates good mood.

2. Choose a room that has 4 walls and is a normal rectangular shape. Standing waves are much more predictable when you have a contained volume that is easier to model. The ideal position of the listener and loudspeakers can be predicted empirically before anything is purchased. More on this later. Forget about a “perfect room” or “golden ratio”. Construction of walls vs floors vs ceilings support the reflection and absorption of frequencies differently. The only way around this is to build a “floating room” where plywood\gypsum walls and ceilings are suspended and all cavities behind are stuffed with insulation. In this case we are still dealing with a floor that will break the golden ratio…

3. Choose a room where the entrance is to the rear or rear side of the room, preferably with a door. A connected volume of space will introduce weird decay behavior and can cause unpredictable low frequency behavior in the room you are in. Standing wave nulls also trend toward a boundary that is absorptive or has less reinforcement. Trending the 1st order length null behind the listener is a great way to use physics to your advantage.

4. Choose a room that is carpeted or can allow a large throw rug. We want to control decay behaviour in our rooms. Carpeting is a great way to instantly reduce global decay times by almost 50% when compared with a bare tile or hardwood.

Example Room- Measurements in Inches

Speaker Setup—Step 2. Laying out the Room

There is an easy way to get the best out of your room that is predictable and repeatable for many rooms. This will allow you to plan for furniture, seating areas, and speaker positioning ahead of doing anything. How do I do it? Like this. I would visit the house of a client before hand and measure the room and go home and draft it out in advance. I would have a road map on site to make the install quick and simple. The clients were always impressed, and I was always finished in as efficient of fashion as possible. I use Sweethome 3D to draft spaces. It is fast and free. The learning curve is low.

1. Choose to lay your room out in the length orientation. Doing this will result in more options for listener placement as well as more room possible behind the speakers in most residential rooms. Orienting your room along the long axis will result in a lower first order room mode that is sympathetic to your woofer’s movement. We already know you are likely to sit on the centerline of the room (a smart idea) so we aren’t really worried about the width mode, as we are in a null by default. The width null will be handled with symmetrical loudspeaker placement within the room. 2 Loudspeakers equidistant from a center point playing a mono mixed bassline as in most songs act as a single phantom source at the center null point, thus cancelling it. No biggie. Same idea is found in subwoofer placement.
See: https://www.harman.com/audio-innovations

2. Choose to place the listener on the centerline of the width of the room at a room interval of 0.2x,0.32x,0.45x ,0.55x, 0.68x, 0.8x the room’s length. (Anthony Grimani.) So, for a room a given length of 223” this results in the listener being placed at optional positions of 100” or 122” or 152” or 178” from the front wall. These ratios along the room’s dimensions are considered “neutral” when compared to other positions along each dimension axis. See image from pg. 304 Handbook of Sound Studio Construction showing Null points of first and second order room modes within a common sized room.


3. Choose to place your loudspeakers using set ratios. Distances from the front wall corresponding to a ratio of 0.2x or 0.32x from above. So for the example room of 223” the options are 44” or 71” from the front wall to front baffle of the speaker. Again, these positions are most favourable to allow a “neutral” presentation from your loudspeakers along the length axis of the room.

4. Choose to abandon an equilateral triangle. Place your loudspeakers at a distance of 0.85x or so from each other vs the listener to them. An isosceles (not equilateral) triangle is the best choice for a 2 Channel system. Placing your loudspeakers in an equilateral triangle is likely to result in a very wide soundstage at the expense of weight in the phantom image. It will also very likely result in a phantom accompanied by 2 hard panned channels of sound, rather than a continuous wall of sound where the phantom, speakers, and in between have equal weight and the speakers are not apparent to be sound sources.

Speaker Setup—Step 3. Setting up the room and speakers

This is the part where you finally get to execute your plan and find out just how easy it is to set up a room properly and pretty much failsafe if you followed the steps so far. Very efficient when you pre-plan and get a great result without any guessing involved. So now on to the painstaking part. Aligning your speakers to the listener.

1. You will need the following:
- Measuring Tape
- Ruler
- 2 Pieces of blank paper
- Painters or other removable tape safe for furniture
- Pencil
- Notepad
- Cross Laser level (I use an Acculine pro that is no longer available but Bosch or Ryobi offer other inexpensive options.)
- Graduated piece of cardboard or similar with scale from zero outwards right and left in 1” increments
- A piece of music with a good male singer (I flip flop between Bareneaked Ladies and Crash Test Dummies depending on what is on hand and my mood)


2. Place the furniture for the MLP and loudspeakers according to your pre-determined locations and aim the loudspeakers loosely at the listening position. Wrap the top of the speaker in blank paper and carefully tape the edges tight to the sides of the speaker ensuring no ripples. Mark the centerline of the speaker on the blank paper using a pencil. This will be used to protect the speaker’s finish from the laser and also to align the laser in a repeatable fashion as you use it on each speaker repeatedly.


3. Place your graduated piece of cardboard or what you used behind the listening position so that the center “0” point is exactly on the centerline of the room and the cardboard is square to the room (not lopsided or on an angle.) I do this frequently so I use a piece of conduit with graduated markings I can mount in my measuring stand.


4. On each loudspeaker, measure from the corner closest to the front wall and side wall each respectively and align your speaker to an arbitrary point away from the “0” point. Record these numbers. Set the other channel the same so they are both equal and opposing one another like a mirror image. I usually start at 5” toe-in offset from centerline, but this is arbitrary as it is simply a way to repeat and record incremental changes. Notice the faint laser mark on the conduit at 4” or so in above image.

5. Set the volume at a “Normal High” Level. This way your content will sound good when you reach for 11 from time to time -important for bass elements and positioning

6. Now the subjective part, where goldilocks syndrome can quickly set in. To keep things targeted I focus on 4 things while setting speakers. Pick a track like “Brian Wilson” or “God Shuffled his Feet” and listen for:

-Does the voice sound natural? (combination of elements below)
-Bass Quality? (moving along length axis changes this)
-Treble Quality? (changing toe in changes this)
-Phantom Weight vs Spaciousness? (moving along width axis changes this)

If things are not working as expected I break out the measuring mic, but I seldom do this for other than home theater setups with multichannel and sub calibrations. If you use the ratios you are pretty darn close to begin with.

7. If this is your personal system, and you are like some, you may be striving for perfection. Forget it. Perfection doesn’t exist and likely you are going to change one variable at the expense of another. Focus on the variables I mention above and you will close in faster than in if you start wildly guessing. It is best begin with bass, then Phantom Weight\Spaciousness, then treble. Easier to break it up into steps and focus on one variable at a time. Pretty easy to test and see this in action.

8. Usually the end result in a setup takes anywhere from 5 to 20 setups. Each time recording the measurements of the speakers location and toe in offset. I only ever listen to the first minute or so of the track, so it goes quick. Usually if the home owner is around it takes fewer attempts. They are usually bonkers excited by this point and they are happy to shoo me away to take over the system after just a few iterations.



The end result is something like this. I didn’t really touch on room acoustics but that is probably best left for another thread -as it is complex and frankly there are general guidelines but very few guarantees without visiting a room in person or looking a pics. We did this work as well but it is involved and customized per space. In this example room, there are windows near the right channel. To shade the treble reflection I used Honeycomb blinds and mirrored the room the best I could with what was available -in this case a wall tapestry. I used simple absorber panels in the front corners to control side to side flutter where the most energy is in the room, and they also help out a little with making the room seem less barren up front. My rule of thumb is if you can talk loudly in the room near the speakers, and sound natural, things are probably on the right track. In this room there was a faint echo I didn’t really think would benefit the presentation. The panels dried it up nicely.

Hope this helps others. Please feel free to comment or ask questions. There is definitely more than one way of doing this, and I’m not saying my way is the “best”. What I can say is that being accurate and methodical in your approach will yield faster results that are predictable and using alignment aids will guarantee proper positioning. This results in both a fantastic soundstage with pinpoint imaging, a larger sweet spot than normal, and a wall of sound with no speakers present. You will also be able to play much louder without bass bloat or listener fatigue. Best of all, you will take far less time to put Goldilocks to rest.

Yes, this is all very good.

I discovered that setting up the speakers along the length rather than width worked much better for my living room. Along the width, I had 6 feet of soundstage depth and not much width. Along the length, I have far less soundstage depth but an absolutely massive width. Just how I like it.

Most will probably not be able to position the speakers away from the front wall due to room use. The rest works well but the bass will not be the same is all. Since the bass will be more boundary loaded it may result in masked detail and less space in playback but with more weighty sound. In practice it is still totally enjoyable.

Hopefully people dont read it and back way reaching for the door.... LOL.

Did anyone give it a shot? (Cue crickets)

Still crickets? Lol

Fantastic read Trevor, I'm glad you brought it back to the top of the forum so I could read it. Personally my room acoustics are the worst so i'm not ready to completely go down that setup path. An SPL meter and my distance meter works ok for now, while lazily sitting in my listening position. Your read is a fun way to really dialing in a setup! When I setup my home theater I will be referencing this.

Bump for Kodiak. Room has changed since then. M5s now. Fundamentals exact same.

I will have to take some measurements on my room and try to seat the MLP to the closest point on that ratio and then I can experiment more with the distance from the front wall for my mains. As a side note, I had a lot more imaging when I had the towers further into the room. I still have that positioned marked and I'm curious how close it is to the suggested ratio.

Well-designed speakers render 3D images when moved away from wall boundaries. If one can't get the speakers away from boundaries, they'll be missing out big time. They may as well go with on-walls to get them out of the way and also for easier acoustic integration with their room.

Mine were roughly 8 foot off wall at the "sweet spot" but I also had my MLP further back into the room so I'm not sure the distance of the speaker to the MLP but since I've only moved it between a foot or two it should be easy to replicate. All I need to put on is Glenn Miller's "In the mood" and see if I am sitting amongst the orchestra again.

8 feet off the front wall should give you a deep soundstage into your front wall relative to the plane of the speaker drivers. There may also be depth behind you. Of course huge width as you've said now and in other posts.

Thanks for the bump Trevor. Cheers. Adding it to my follow list now. I’ll try and contribute here when it makes sense to.

Cool beans!

Mojo, there is a point of diminishing returns like anything else. Once the speakers are far enough away from the wall that the bass no longer couples at all there is little benefit to moving them out further. I wouldn't bother with more than 4' unless you have a space that is huge and single purposed with subs. In that case..... mwa ha ha ha ha!

4' is the 1/4 wavelength of 80hz or so. Beyond that is pointless if you have subs IMO. Look up Allison Effect.

In Kodiaks room the speakers are able to be placed closer than the ratio implies, because we are able to place the listener in an ideal spot and place the speakers at ratios from the front and sidewalls that are not going to cause a deep bass cancellation.

It is fun to put speakers way out in the room, I think Brwsaw did it. But not really practical once the vacuum comes out...

Agreed about the point of diminishing returns.

Placing these guys was fun back when.... But still went through the process. Worth the time! Lasers all the way.

Had a demo last night so took the chance to take a pic of scale with guest. Perhaps a future Axiom owner. He liked the M5s.

Anyway. Chance to post a fun photo.

Is the speaker that tall or are you that short?

That tall. 6' guy. Not me

I think Trevor said he built those himself ...

Missed the "and guest" part.

He built them.

a reference to Edna?