For the obsessed tweakers out there.. after you spent countless hours moving your speakers by increments of 1/8 of an inch in every direction listening to your reference material until you found nirvana, what is the optimal space from the back wall and side wall for the M80 speakers ?

Everyone's room is different, shape, size, flooring, furniture, curtains ect. My left M80 is sitting in front of an opening to the breakfast area, and the right is halfway in front of a walkout to the hallway, so I guess technically they are sitting between 5 and 10 ft in front of the walls behind them, lol!

About as far out as I left it after my son pushed it around.

Oh wait, this thread isn't for me, is it...

There is no one hard fast rule, every room is different. You want the drivers at different distances from the side and front wall. Also, you need to have the speakers out enough to allow the bass ports to filter into the room.

I think I have about 8" of room behind my 80's.

As has been said, no room is the same. Mine are currently 14 inches from the back of the cabinet to the wall.

Distance from the side walls can also come into play for best performance. One of mine is 22 inches from wall and the other is 30 inches.

I put little carpet sliders under each rubber foot to move them around easier. Seems to be a never ending quest to find that perfect position.

I have mine 48" from the back wall (measured to the front baffle)

That's interesting, I measure mine from the rear of the speaker.

Mine are 19 inches from the rear wall, 68 inches from the outer wall, and 30 inches from the closet wall.

As others have said, every room is different, but my measurements are correct!

When measuring distances of the speaker to the back wall it should be measured from the wall to the front of the speaker (baffle)

JohnK brought this to my attention a while back.

Yes, Micah; as Rick commented, it's the distance from the center of the mid-woofer cones to the nearest room surfaces that determines the extent of boundary effects on frequency response. The distance to the back of the speaker enclosure isn't of any particular significance(except that at least a few inches of "breathing room" should be given to a rear port).

As has also been mentioned, the distances from the cone centers to the floor and two walls should be kept unequal so that the boundary effects don't pile up at one frequency.

Ok, so when you guys posted that you set your speakers 24 inches out from the wall, you were measuring from the front of the speaker? That makes a bit more sense to me now. Wow so your only out 7 1/2 inches from the rear of the speaker then? That is a big difference indeed, as mine are out 19 inches from the rear and 36 inches from the front!

I started with my M80's pretty close to the back wall (8"-10" from the back of the speaker to the wall). They had too much bass so I moved them farther away from the wall and they are about 20" or so. Like many have said, you have to experiment with the placement in your room.

Sure, Micah; your distances to cone centers are about 40" from rear wall, 72" from outer wall and 34" from the closet wall. The distances to the floor are 15" or less. These spreads seem reasonable, although the closet wall could be a few inches less.

Rives Audio recommends placing the mains either 1/3 or 1/5th the distance of the length of the room from the back wall ... my room is 25' in length so I placed the 80's 5ft (60") off of the back wall and 23" from the side wall.

This formula works best for our particular room after having the speakers all over the place prior to this setup, and believe me whenever I say that I spent many hours tweaking the placement of the darn things.

Rives Audio Speaker Placement (pdf file)

Rives speaker placement article from Audioholics

Rives Audio Home Page

Thank you everyone for the responses, much appreciated. I guess there is no escaping the fun of tweaking forever and a day in search of perfection. I have good starting points here so thanks for that. As for me, my Veritas 2.3s are 38 inch from the back wall (from wall to front of speaker), the right speaker is 27" from the side wall and the left speaker is 110" from the left wall since the room is open on that side.

Thanks Rick for the links !

So after reading all the info here and on the links I of course started playing around with my speaker placement !!

I "think" I've improved the sound a tiny bit.. but my room needs to be treated before I do anymore changes.. it's the law of diminishing returns ie: 3 hours of tweaking for only 5% improvement cause the room is 50% of the problem..

I think you know you've got it perfect when you play your favorite song and it brings a tear to you eye and grin from ear to ear..that's when you know, you've got it RIGHT

that bout sums it up.