Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Speaker Placement

Now that I know, more or less, what speakers I want, its time to look at the space I'm going to be putting them in. The plan is to start with mains, add a sub later this year (Merry Christmas me!), add surround 3-5 months after that and finally a center.

As I understand it, the space you put the speakers into has as much effect on the sound as the speakers themselves. In my case, they will be going into the livingroom of a concrete construction apartment (ie: a nice reflective box with furniture).

So, I have two issues to deal with: placement inside the space, possible treatment to deal with reflection issues.

Placement:

Below is a drawing of the main area in my apartment along with the basic furniture. The prefered (and easierst) placement of the display and speakers is as shown in the diagram, along the long wall.


The Mains would be placed either side of the display(where the ones are), but I am limited as to where by the hall to the bedrooms. The speakers would probably only be 4 or 5 feet apart and I would be about 8 feet from the display. Most of the time I would be listening from the main couch. How does this distance between speakers affect imaging/sound stage? Ignoring the hall, what is an ideal long wall placement of the mains for a room this shape?

The alternative is to move everything around and put the Display and mains along the short wall. There are some challenges involved in moving 80 gallons of salt water and I have no idea where I would put the love seat.

YOur comments an input would be greatly appreciated.

Hey Fred, I think that would work they way your thinking. Idealy, you want the mains seperated at least the same distance you are away from them or greater, or 8ft. But this is not set in stone. Could you place one main on the other side of the hallway entrance?

I'm funny, I'm a nut to research everything I do to death, but in the end, I'm not a stickler for rules. If I was satisfied with the sound, I would leave the speakers with the 5' distance on either side of the TV. Your only 8 feet back so although it's not an equal distance, it wouldn't be enough to bother me.

I think having one speaker way off to the side and one close to the TV would skew the soundstage a lot more and it just wouldn't look aesthetically correct to me, personally.

I definitely wouldn't be ambitious enough to move those big tanks unless the sound wasn't working at all for you.

I'd love to see some pics of your tanks. I love salt water aquariums but out of respect for the fish, never tried to do one myself.

Fred,

I tried my 80s 5 feet apart with me 8 feet away. The centre image was excellent but too small...too focused. Also there was no soundstage beyond the speaker boundaries. This last observation has a lot do do with room size and acoustics and I would expect that your set-up, given the room dimensions would also suffer from the same.

I experimented with placement for months and found that the equilateral triangle placement was far superior to all others.

Also, don't worry about your potentially bright room. You'll find that you need a very low amount of power and the reflections will likely give you a tremendous soundstage and "air" to the music.

I agree with your observations Mojo, but I wonder, would you feel it was it distracting enough for him to consider rearrange 80 Gallons = 668 pounds of water? I guess, in the end, only he can make that decision.

I feel sorry for all your fish once you get your system and play the Darla Tap Scene.

Murph, good point. I can tell you that it would bother me to no end not to know what it might sound like .

Thanks for the replies. I did some reading on acoustics at work tonight. Gotta love it when everything runs well. You can get deep into this stuff quickly! Baffles and slats and traps. Oh my!

So, The current position is maybe/probably going to be the best acoustically for two channel. From what I hhave read, having one speaker next to a side wall and one next to a hall is gonna mess with the sound stage.

Its time to get rid of the empty tank. That will give me a bit of room to move things away from the hall to the bedrooms. One foot left gives me an increase of two feet between speakers.

I can worry about the best position for 5.1 when the time comes.

In my room it pulls the soundstage a little toward the side with the wall. By using toe-in and kicking the speaker without a wall up 1db it pretty much balances it out. The speaker near the wall is about 3 feet away from the wall.

In my apartment I also sit 8 feet from my screen. I agree with Mojo about the soundstage being to focused at least for 2 channel music with my M80s only 5 feet apart so I came up with a workaround.

For movies I leave them on either side of the TV about 5 feet apart pointing straight out. Putting them further out makes the soundstage to wide for movies as there is action on the screen but the sound associated with it is several feet off to the side. I find that very distracting. Pointing them straight out helps them blend better with the surrounds.

For stereo I pull them apart and forward to form an equilateral triangle and toe them in. The equilateral triangle give me a wider soundstage and the toe-in reduces the problem of only one speaker being near a wall.

The best thing you can do is experiment a lot. I’ve had my Axioms for over a year now and I’m still noticing different things as I move them and tweak settings.

Is there a button on the remote for that? I know in advance that I will be to lazy to move the speakers around every time I want to switch between movies and music.

Having heard what these speakers are capable of at Axiom, I will probably do lots of fiddling until I find something that works.

I'm would like to find some DIY sound absorbtion/diffusion solutions that I can apply should I find the need. Does anybody have any good links I can go read? Besides, I need something to keep me distracted for another month or so.