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

Speaker Setup—Step 3. Setting up the room and speakers

This is the part where you finally get to execute your plan and find out just how easy it is to set up a room properly and pretty much failsafe if you followed the steps so far. Very efficient when you pre-plan and get a great result without any guessing involved. So now on to the painstaking part. Aligning your speakers to the listener.

1. You will need the following:
- Measuring Tape
- Ruler
- 2 Pieces of blank paper
- Painters or other removable tape safe for furniture
- Pencil
- Notepad
- Cross Laser level (I use an Acculine pro that is no longer available but Bosch or Ryobi offer other inexpensive options.)
- Graduated piece of cardboard or similar with scale from zero outwards right and left in 1” increments
- A piece of music with a good male singer (I flip flop between Bareneaked Ladies and Crash Test Dummies depending on what is on hand and my mood)


2. Place the furniture for the MLP and loudspeakers according to your pre-determined locations and aim the loudspeakers loosely at the listening position. Wrap the top of the speaker in blank paper and carefully tape the edges tight to the sides of the speaker ensuring no ripples. Mark the centerline of the speaker on the blank paper using a pencil. This will be used to protect the speaker’s finish from the laser and also to align the laser in a repeatable fashion as you use it on each speaker repeatedly.


3. Place your graduated piece of cardboard or what you used behind the listening position so that the center “0” point is exactly on the centerline of the room and the cardboard is square to the room (not lopsided or on an angle.) I do this frequently so I use a piece of conduit with graduated markings I can mount in my measuring stand.


4. On each loudspeaker, measure from the corner closest to the front wall and side wall each respectively and align your speaker to an arbitrary point away from the “0” point. Record these numbers. Set the other channel the same so they are both equal and opposing one another like a mirror image. I usually start at 5” toe-in offset from centerline, but this is arbitrary as it is simply a way to repeat and record incremental changes. Notice the faint laser mark on the conduit at 4” or so in above image.

5. Set the volume at a “Normal High” Level. This way your content will sound good when you reach for 11 from time to time -important for bass elements and positioning

6. Now the subjective part, where goldilocks syndrome can quickly set in. To keep things targeted I focus on 4 things while setting speakers. Pick a track like “Brian Wilson” or “God Shuffled his Feet” and listen for:

-Does the voice sound natural? (combination of elements below)
-Bass Quality? (moving along length axis changes this)
-Treble Quality? (changing toe in changes this)
-Phantom Weight vs Spaciousness? (moving along width axis changes this)

If things are not working as expected I break out the measuring mic, but I seldom do this for other than home theater setups with multichannel and sub calibrations. If you use the ratios you are pretty darn close to begin with.

7. If this is your personal system, and you are like some, you may be striving for perfection. Forget it. Perfection doesn’t exist and likely you are going to change one variable at the expense of another. Focus on the variables I mention above and you will close in faster than in if you start wildly guessing. It is best begin with bass, then Phantom Weight\Spaciousness, then treble. Easier to break it up into steps and focus on one variable at a time. Pretty easy to test and see this in action.

8. Usually the end result in a setup takes anywhere from 5 to 20 setups. Each time recording the measurements of the speakers location and toe in offset. I only ever listen to the first minute or so of the track, so it goes quick. Usually if the home owner is around it takes fewer attempts. They are usually bonkers excited by this point and they are happy to shoo me away to take over the system after just a few iterations.



The end result is something like this. I didn’t really touch on room acoustics but that is probably best left for another thread -as it is complex and frankly there are general guidelines but very few guarantees without visiting a room in person or looking a pics. We did this work as well but it is involved and customized per space. In this example room, there are windows near the right channel. To shade the treble reflection I used Honeycomb blinds and mirrored the room the best I could with what was available -in this case a wall tapestry. I used simple absorber panels in the front corners to control side to side flutter where the most energy is in the room, and they also help out a little with making the room seem less barren up front. My rule of thumb is if you can talk loudly in the room near the speakers, and sound natural, things are probably on the right track. In this room there was a faint echo I didn’t really think would benefit the presentation. The panels dried it up nicely.

Hope this helps others. Please feel free to comment or ask questions. There is definitely more than one way of doing this, and I’m not saying my way is the “best”. What I can say is that being accurate and methodical in your approach will yield faster results that are predictable and using alignment aids will guarantee proper positioning. This results in both a fantastic soundstage with pinpoint imaging, a larger sweet spot than normal, and a wall of sound with no speakers present. You will also be able to play much louder without bass bloat or listener fatigue. Best of all, you will take far less time to put Goldilocks to rest.

Yes, this is all very good.

I discovered that setting up the speakers along the length rather than width worked much better for my living room. Along the width, I had 6 feet of soundstage depth and not much width. Along the length, I have far less soundstage depth but an absolutely massive width. Just how I like it.

Most will probably not be able to position the speakers away from the front wall due to room use. The rest works well but the bass will not be the same is all. Since the bass will be more boundary loaded it may result in masked detail and less space in playback but with more weighty sound. In practice it is still totally enjoyable.

Hopefully people dont read it and back way reaching for the door.... LOL.

Did anyone give it a shot? (Cue crickets)

Still crickets? Lol

Fantastic read Trevor, I'm glad you brought it back to the top of the forum so I could read it. Personally my room acoustics are the worst so i'm not ready to completely go down that setup path. An SPL meter and my distance meter works ok for now, while lazily sitting in my listening position. Your read is a fun way to really dialing in a setup! When I setup my home theater I will be referencing this.

Bump for Kodiak. Room has changed since then. M5s now. Fundamentals exact same.

I will have to take some measurements on my room and try to seat the MLP to the closest point on that ratio and then I can experiment more with the distance from the front wall for my mains. As a side note, I had a lot more imaging when I had the towers further into the room. I still have that positioned marked and I'm curious how close it is to the suggested ratio.

Well-designed speakers render 3D images when moved away from wall boundaries. If one can't get the speakers away from boundaries, they'll be missing out big time. They may as well go with on-walls to get them out of the way and also for easier acoustic integration with their room.

Mine were roughly 8 foot off wall at the "sweet spot" but I also had my MLP further back into the room so I'm not sure the distance of the speaker to the MLP but since I've only moved it between a foot or two it should be easy to replicate. All I need to put on is Glenn Miller's "In the mood" and see if I am sitting amongst the orchestra again.