I was drinking a few beers the other day and sitting listening to my m80's. Decided to experiment with placemnet a little. I moved my couch 4" off the back wall. I Scooted the m80's forward so that they were now 1 foot from the back wall instead of 9". I moved the m80's in a little and changed to a VERY slight toe in.

After calibrating everything sounds GREAT. I also moved my center channel a couple of inches higher (all I could manage) and aimed it a little more appropriately.

All of these minor changes resulted in some noticeable improvements. I had been noticing some songs were coming off as slightly over emphasized in the midbass/bass category. This is definitely not the case now and I'm guessing that the change is form increasing the distance of the rear m80 ports to the wall. Even though I moved the m80s a little closer together the sound stage seems to have widened due to the decreased toe in.

Time to go listen some more... I love my 3 year old V2 m80s . The release of the V3's didn't make mine sound any worse...

Glad you found some improvement.

I’ve been preaching experimenting with placement to new member since I first set up my M80s and found out what it did for me. I am convinced that most owners even some long time ones are missing out on noticeable improvements in all their speakers by sticking with default placements or just setting them up and feeling they sound great and not seeing if they might actually sound better.

IMO the M80s are very sensitive to placement. Even a little tweaking can go a long way.

My favorite tweak of all is to elevate my M80s. I’m guessing in large part do to raising the tweeters and midrange drivers above the furniture and getting the woofers away from the floor it really opens up the sound of my M80s. Soundstage and ambience are noticeably improved by elevating them. I also think that having the midrange drivers rather than the tweeters at ear level is also part of the improved sound.

Cheers,
Dean

P.S. And yet another good reason to drink beer.

How high?

My best experience has been high enough to get the tweeters above the level of my furniture backs. Also, so that the speakers are lined up so that my ears are just below the tweeters or on level with the midrange drivers. The farther away I sit the less important ear level becomes but height of the tweeters and if possibly one or more of the midrange drivers above the furniture remains important. With my present seating milk crates work perfect.

I also found that placing my center above my screen, when I had an HDTV not my projection screen, sounded better than keeping the tweeters on the same level. I didn’t notice any issues with panning across the front with the center up higher but it did create a more substantial front soundstage by making it sound like things were coming more from up front rather than from speaker level. Elevating the mains also has a similar effect for me and also makes it easier to keep the tweeters near the same level if you’re into such things.

Cheers,
Dean

Hmmm, so would you predict that the vp180 would sound better mounted on the wall above the HDTV than on top of the HT table with the TV mounted on the wall?

I really can’t say. Every combination of room layout, furnishing, speaker and listener positioning, personal perception and preferences creates so many variables I don’t think there is any one “right” answer. There is something to be said for following general guidelines like Dolby or Audyssey speaker placement, speakers set to small w/80Hz crossover working ok for most people. However, IMO those generalizations fail miserably when one want to get the most out of their system.

I post comments that have worked for me. Though I sometimes forget I try to mention if they have worked on more than one room/setup so as to show a more general usefulness. However, the reality is that just like demoing speakers in your own room rather than at the store is going to give better results, experimenting is the only way to know for sure if something actually works better.

Note: One pitfall to experiments it that often something new can sound much better or much worse because it’s simply different. So spending a little time with each change and tweeking each change is important to rule out the different-ness being the real factor.

I’ve also found that while wholesale changes can be interesting they make it hard to know what change did what to the sound. By making deliberate changes like pointing speakers straight out, then toeing them in drastically can make what those changes are doing easier to perceive.

So after all that my short answer would be that I think putting the speaker above would work better but . . . .

Also, many people don’t like their center above the screen even when angled down toward the listening position.

Cheers,
Dean

Placement is very important. As Dean mentioned, it is important for newbies to experiment, experiment, experiment. To often people think they need to upgrade after a few days or weeks because they are not hearing what they expected.

I thought all of the experimentation was supposed to happen in Thailand.

That's exactly what happened to me. But my problem was with my receiver setting even though I haven't tried many different speakers placements so far. Listening to music on pure direct or stereo mode is not as good as Dolby Prologic too, and that was just the thing I was missing on my music.

Randy makes an excellent point especially for someone switching over from other brands of speakers. If you get use to a brands characteristic “sound” the new brand may not sound right even if they are more accurate at reproducing the material. Similarly many of us, me included, like to run our surrounds and/or subs a little “hot,” louder than our other speakers. However, IMO it’s best not to do this right away no matter how tempting it is to want to hear more from the sub and surrounds. Getting a good accurate baseline is important. Then if you just must play some speakers louder than the others you’ll have a better understanding of how you are changing things from the intended presentation.

I had tried soooo many different placement options, settings, etc. when I got my m80's in 2007 before finally settling on where they stayed for about the last year or more. Come to find out, there was still room for improvement