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

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.