Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Tone Control Blasphemy

That's good news, cameron. Often, there are general rules most people try to follow for speaker placement, but there are so many variables that not everything will work. Speaker placement and room acoustics can be the two most frustrating yet rewarding variables to work with. A little patience and a lot of tweaking can go a long way. The rule that is the most important to follow is: use what sounds best to you.

Hello Cameron,

"I had always read on forums that the more you can move speakers out from the wall the better, so I have always done that."

This is misguided advice. As long as you don't put floorstanding speakers in the corners, which may result in too much bass reinforcement, most floorstanding speakers are designed to benefit from the deep bass boundary reinforcement that the floor and wall behind the speaker provide. Of course, you don't want to jam them up flat against the back wall, but the M60s can certainly be used with 6 inches clearance.

It's corners that are a no-no for most speakers except, in some applications, subwoofers.

The only speakers that I advise moving well out (2-5 feet) from the wall behind are floorstanding bipole and dipole designs (electrostatics, planar magnetics like Magnepans, bipoles like Mirages, etc) where you want the speakers' in-and-out of phase rear radiation to reflect from the back wall.

I'm pleased that you've got your M60s sounding good.

Regards,

Thanks guys.

I have a big 65" rear projection monster tv in between the speakers, so I always assumed that if the speakers were not out in front of it it would ruin the soundstage. So far, that is not the case. I don't know if the physics work but to my ears it works and like you guys say that's all that matters.

Time will tell if this is my permanent fix, but I'm cautiously optomistic. Why the hell am I so picky anyway?

Alan,

I have the right speaker 1 foot from the side wall and the left speaker 18 inches from the side wall. Is this enough?

Cameron:
I only have a moment, so please excuse me for not making a detailed post about this, but....

Be VERY careful when "turning up the bass all the way". Your asking the speakers (and amp) to supply many, many times the bass / power as a "flat" setting and it's not hard to do damage!

Cameron, Alan's description of the advice you read before as "misguided" is certainly accurate from my study and personal experience. You don't have to be concerned about being too close to the wall behind as long as the port has at least a few inches of "breathing room". One factor that is significant is that you shouldn't have the distance from the center of the woofer cones to the back and side walls equal. If they're equal, the room boundary reinforcement from the walls would pile up near one frequency, causing boominess, so keep those distances different.

Cameron: Don't let someone tell you how to listen to your music. Feel free to 'enhance' it anyway you see fit. And just remember that in the mastering of that CD you buy, the music has already been adulterated many, many times by amongst other things, op-amps.

I'm happy to say that the changes are still sounding good. The highs sound so good now, and I still get impact from the bass. Don't get me wrong, it's nothing like the impact I used to get in college with cerwin vega 15" woofers with the bass boost on, bass knob all the way up, and a graphic eq with a smiley face configuration....man I was insane... but I'm willing to bet if I heard that setup now I would think it sounded like crap.

The last few nights I've been doing a lot more listening to the actual music instead of thinking about the sound quality.

I hope this keeps up.

I took some pictures of my room, I'll post them when I figure out how to do it.

I finally got around to figuring out how to post pictures. Well, it's been over a week and I'm loving how my system is sounding more and more. I haven't touched a tone control or used the sub for music at all, and it sounds fantastic. I am a very happy guy, but I've been losing sleep because it's hard to turn it off and go to bed!!

I'll probably start a thread with these pics in the home theater section, I hope double posting isn't too frowned upon when one of them is not starting a thread.

I've had all these speakers/subs for at least 3 years now, and I'm just now fully appreciating them.






Ahhh yes. Motivation was high to take out the shelf to hang up the speaker, but very low to paint where the shelf used to be...:)




A rare moment when all the toys are put away. Nice pillow, busting at the seams.



I have since extended the sub cord so it's not sticking out from under the couch... too tempting for a 2 year old.




Media Library shot using winamp hooked to my tv. It looks clearer/better than this picture, I'm impressed with the quality for just using s-video. I'd love to use component cords but so far all insructions on line look like a nightmare to understand.



Here's a shot of a playlist, once again it looks better in person.

Wow, 2 weeks and I haven't touched a tone control. Instead of listening to see how much I like the sound, I am now simply listening to the music... what a concept. I wish I had moved these baby's back to the wall years ago. I moved the speakers back out into the room away from the wall just to check, and yep they sounded thin and lifeless again.

I measured my new speaker postion from the sweet spot so I could reset my speaker distance settings on me receiver and I'm 14 feet away from them. Out of curiosity I measured how far apart they now are and they are... 14 feet apart! I have noticed that the imaging is much better now even with the big tv in the middle, I wonder if that's because of the equalateral triangle that I've got now.