Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Saving space!

I've been an avid observer of this board ever since I decided to buy speakers. I ended up buying M60's, no need to say more! I never posted a question here, I never had to, all I had to do was look thru the previous posts! You guys are great!

My question, which is more important? keeping the distance between the speakers as far as possible or keeping the speakers as far away from the corners? If I had to giveup one of these, which one would be a better trade off?

I'm moving into a new place and its 19 X 12, and 9ft high. I can setup anyway I want, any suggestions? I have M60's driven by Denon 2803. I'm still penny-pinching for my sub, center and quads.

Thanks,
Mad.

Since you can set up your room however you want, I'd first try putting the speakers on the longer wall about 10 feet apart, a foot or so away from the wall, and toed-in a few degrees. Set up your listening position so that you are about 10 feet away from each speaker.

This setup keeps your speakers far enough from the corners so you don't get any horn-loading effect. Keep in mind that it's only a starting point. I suggest moving your stereo equipment into the living room first and try any placement options you can think of until you find the one that's the best compromise between livability and listenability. Then move the rest of your furniture in.

Hmmm, but after you move the furniture in, the sound will reflect/absorb differently around the room so you'll have to start all over.

What Peter said.

There really is no substitute for tinkering around and trying different options in your own, personal space.

My experience was that I liked getting my M60's out of the corners, and that doing so while fiddling with the toe-in angle made a big difference in the imaging.

Thanks. BUT, the problem is, the door to the room is dead center. So, I'll have to move the system either side of the door. In which case, one of my speakers will be in a corner.

I can put them 10 feet apart, and a feet to spare on the corner side of the speaker. Or I can move them together a bit closer, may be a 7-8 ft and provide more space to the corner speaker.

I'm going to try both, but wanted to know, in general, which one works better.

Mad, in general you should be more concerned with having enough separation between the speakers rather than concern about being too close to a wall. You should, however, try to make the distances to walls significantly different, to help minimize the influence on certain frequencies. For example, if a speaker is one foot from a side wall, it could be three feet from the wall behind it.

Based on my own experiments with my M60s, I'm thinking your short wall will be the better place to put the M60s, because of the benefits of sitting far enough back to get a good soundstange.

My set-up is in a 14'x18' room (open at the back to adjoining kitchen), with the speakers 8' feet apart exactly along the 14' side, ie, across the room from the opening. I would like to place them 10' apart, but cannot easily get them more than 8' apart because there's a door in one corner of the 14' wall. The speakers are 1'+ from the back wall (very important IMHO) and toed in slightly. The room has hellish sliding glass doors on EACH side wall, but drape curtains along each 6' door have tamed them perfectly, and the quasi-translucent yet thick drapes block out the neighbors as well.

Key item, for me: the preferred seating is at least 10' back from the speakers. We have a little couch on wheels that we roll back and forth from about 12' back to 9' or 10', for movies and music.

This set-up works great for us. I think it's important to be back from the speakers. It seems like this would be hard to acheive if you placed yours along the longer wall at a greater distance, because in your room it will be hard to sit far enough back from them, given that you'll want the speakers 1'+ out from the wall, AND realistically one is not always seated along the opposite wall ... you move around etc.

I don't have the chance to experiment with corners, because of the door along the speaker wall ... but you may as well try that out and see. Suspect it might be too boomy, but really have no idea.

But tinker and let us know.

Birdman

John, 3 feet away from the wall behind ? ..mmmm thats lot of space. how significantly different should the distances be? A foot? more.. I'll try this but how is this going to affect and what should I look for??

Birdman, so far I have tried only separating the speakers apart. I'll try what you suggested! I wish I had a couch on wheels. It would immensely help me right now!

From your point, I think I need to clear up a misconception of mine, so, theoretically if we had the speakers 10 ft apart in an empty feild, what would be the approximate seating distance to get the best sound stage?

Mad.

Differences in the distance from the center of the woofer to the floor and two nearest walls should be as much as possible(room practicalities control)to smooth peaks and valleys the wall and floor reinforcement causes in the upper bass between about 100-200Hz.

CatnFox,
I posted this awhile ago (see the link if you are interested in the background), but i will put up the image again. This is an idea of the Golden Ratio room which i used as a basis to start placement of my speakers.

So what you're saying is, basically, 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 ?

Chess,

I don't doubt the effectiveness of that arrangement, and in a room dedicated solely to HT, I'm sure that's the thing to do. But, a large number of us have to incorporate our systems into normal living spaces. In my case, according to the diagram, with the "RW" at 11.5 feet, I should have the fronts of my speakers about 5 feet out from the RW. With an 18 foot long room that's just not practical. I can't let 4.5 feet of room (50 sq. of a 200 sq. foot room) lie fallow. (Plant yer crops early) Any suggestions? I can, however, achieve the rest of the dimensions, and I'm grateful for the info.

Ajax, the Golden Ratio is meant as a starting point for those who have no idea where/how to setup their speakers. You could for instance divide all those values by 2 to decrease the distances.
Generally the concept is to try and setup a triangle with as perfect dimensions as possible. If you could see my own basement setup, it does not come anywhere near the Golden Ratio numbers.
Hmm, let me post that image so you can see.



Note how my front speakers and my couch are only 8 feet apart while the speakers themselves barely sit 6 feet apart with about 1 foot clearance from the back wall and varying distances from the side walls.

Wouldn't it be better to have the TV right in between the two main speakers and move the sub to the outside? It seems a little off center.

Actually Mike, due to constraints with cable lengths, my positioning was even more limited at first.
However, that is a somewhat older picture and the new setup has the sub in the corner to the left of the room (swap spots with the audio 'rack', if that's what i can call it). The problem with this setup is that the soundstage is not very wide due to the clost promiximity of the M60s to each other.
They really need more space to open up.

Thanks Chess (Please note. I did NOT call you "cheese." ) Now I can breathe a little easier about not being able to get that far away from the back wall. I think I can do a good job of achieving the equilateral triangle.

I do have another question about placement, but I don't want to hijack the post, so I'll go start a new one.

Boy! I DO like those M60s. I'm feeling a wave of uprgradeitis coming on, and I haven't even received my M22tis yet.

Chess,

It appears as though -- and I'm sure JohnK will back me up on this -- that your right M60 is placed so that the distance of the lower woofer is the same from the nearest 3 surfaces! And your sub isn't in a corner, either.

The compromises we all must make...

Ok, here are the pics of the latest setup so everything is clear:




I will do this in the non-metric units for those who are still working on the conversion.
Note how the right M60 is about 6 inches from the tv, 1' from the right wall and 1.5' from the back wall. These are different distances but with so little room to move, i don't have much choice.
The other pic should show where my EP350 now sits in the corner.
IF i had much longer a/v cables, i could potentially move the audio rack to the left hand side of the room and open up my speakers more, but this would cost a significant amount of cash (i would need new speaker cable lengths and at least 3 new a/v cables at least 12' in length). That is spare cash i really don't have and it would leave me with a real bucket of cables. I could almost start my own cable shop.

Yeah, but if you start your own cable shop, you could make a bucket of money!

Only in theory Ken, only in theory.

Clearly that's the case. My company's cable division is definitely losing money. I don't see why, I mean, they were going out of business when we bought them; why shouldn't they be profitable now?

Sometimes I think my boss has the business acumen of a dead cow.

Chess, I still say that the sub should be behind an M60. Say left corner,about an inch from the wall behind, with the driver pointed left at the sidewall about a foot away. Left M60 immediately in front of it, similar to right M60 placement. TV moved about 2' to the left to center.

You may also want to reposition your AV rack to where the CDs are currently. This will allow you widen your soundstage a bit.

Right about now, chess is regretting ever having posted those pics... Everyone knows the best way to set up someone elses system.

Couple of problems with your suggestion John:

In reply to:

---

I still say that the sub should be behind an M60. Say left corner,about an inch from the wall behind, with the driver pointed left at the sidewall about a foot away. Left M60 immediately in front of it, similar to right M60 placement.

---

The sub is presently about 8 inches from the back wall which means i already have very little room to push it back.
Second, moving the M60 in front of the sub now puts it an extra foot out further from the back wall essentially cutting the horizontal distance from my sitting position to the speaker from 8 feet to 7 or less which is already too close.
Third, moving the left M60 that far left destroys any chance of having a reasonable triangle and instead greatly increases the off axis angle to about 110 to 120 degrees.

In reply to:

---

TV moved about 2' to the left to center.

---

Lastly, if the tv were move 2' to the left, it would be off center from the entire couch except for the person siiting at the very far left. At the present time, the TV is centered just to the middle of the couch. An above view diagram would be more helpful i imagine but i would have to draw it to scale to show exactly the problem with this room.
Perhaps this picture set will better show the tv locale in relation to the couch as well as the speakers in relation to the rest of the room furnishings for which i also cannot move. Keep in mind the couch CANNOT be moved at all backwards b/c of the staircase.
(Do not let the off angle shot fool you. The centre of the couch is the centre of the tv and the left hand seat position is right in front of the left M60.

tinfoil, see my prevous post about my limitation with the audio rack and cables.

The only regret i have is not having met you and Ken in person yet to oggle your hard laboured, HT systems.

What HT system? Is there one hiding around here I don't know about? Here, HT system... Come to papa...

Yes Ken. I think you understand my quip now.
No?

Ah, but Peter has more of an HT setup than I. And why'd ya lay into me? I haven't said anything about your setup :-P All I said was that you could open a cable shop...

Sorry Ken.
I keep getting you two confused.
Perhaps seeing the two of you together would help to clarify the difference eh?

He's the tall one. I'm the one with the (very) long red hair. At some point, i will get off my lazy ass and post a picture.

Dear God! What is that thing??



Either it's a remnant of a childhood science fair volcano, or a very fancy cat scratching post.

Looks like Chess might have had a close encounter of the 4th or 5th kind once upon a time.

Peter, you are correct on count #2.
My wife built a tree-like cat scratch post from old blue carpet and a cardboard tube not unlike the ones used for SVS cylinder subs. It doubles as a little cat castle (has 2 little tunnels inside it as well. She really should make them for a living and sell them for ridiculous amounts of money. Buying one at the store costs around $150 for something of that size. It cost her about ten bucks.
You should see what she's been doing with baby mobiles lately.

Did she analyze how to incorporate a number of gloved hands on the mobile to assist in changing the messiest of diapers? Perhaps she's discovered some help using the mobiles in the feeding department. Post the pics soon.

Actually jbz, the mobiles have a much simpler task, they attempt to keep the kid preoccupied while one changes the soiled linens. From what i've heard, it has worked wonders with at least one youngster. He apparently stares at the thing whenever he gets the chance.

The last time my wife gave one to an expecting friend, the woman thought my wife had bought it at a craft store. She is really very good with putting little knick knack things together...and sewing!!
Ooh she's pretty good with that too. She recently made some form fitting covers for the big Tannoys while we await the eventual purchase of equipment to drive them. Here's some pics on that.

Just goes to show you that the saying is indeed true: The good ones are always taken.

Nice setup Chess. I think you have the exact same tv as I do, Toshiba 50HDX82. I ordered my Axioms yesterday and hopefully arrives this week and I'll post some pics of it.

whos brand of interconnects is she using? might affect the scratchability of the post...
dan