Dear All, My summer holiday has started and with it the time to undertake a tidy of the listening room. I had to move my speakers to vacuum, so I thought it’d be a good time to revisit speaker placement. I think I’ve watched around six hours or YouTube videos on the subject, and the results have been very much worth the time invested.
My room is problematic in that it’s a square. The kind of shape that should be really difficult to get good sound in. Fortunately it’s also a dedicated room, so I can place things wherever I like. Lucky boy. My system has sounded pretty good for a few years, but I’ve always wanted the sound to be a little more free of the boxes with more image depth.
The two “rules” I kept coming across were the Rule of Fifths, and using the Golden Mean to deal with a square room. Each of these rules improved aspects of the presentation, but together they have been a bit of a revelation!
The Rule of Fifths states that you want the acoustic center of the speaker drivers 1/5 from the wall, and your listening position (your ears) the same. In my room that puts the front of the speakers 1.16m from the front wall and my ears the same distance from the wall behind me. This had the effect of smoothing out room response wonderfully well. In particular there are no more bass bumps to worry about, allowing much more clarity in the midrange. The side to side imaging was very much better! However, it exposed that the treble was running a little hot for my liking.
The next step was to try using the Golden Mean to determine how far from the side walls my speakers should be. Keeping the 1.16m from the rear wall and multiplying it by 1.6 (5:8 ratio) gave me 1.855m from the side walls. Well, what a shock! This change of position removed all treble glare and hotness AND increased the depth of stereo image in a way that is spectacular. To achieve this move I had to shift one speaker 13cm and the other 7cm, both towards the wall. With the speakers further apart I needed to increase the toe-in a little to get the center images focused again.
The sound is now well free of the boxes and the deepest I’ve heard at home. The stereo width is outside the boxes. Well recorded pop is crystal clear and orchestral recordings have gained a sometimes cavernous acoustic. I have a few loudness wars albums like Califonication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and they are now completely listenable without the need to adjust the volume control on my Majestic.
All in all, this zero-cost improvement to my system took around 7 hours to achieve. Most pleasing is that I’m now getting far better value for money from my system. The PMC speakers sound as good or better as I’ve heard them in any dealer showroom, the detail strengths of the RP8/Apheta2 combination are being taken advantage of, and my Slee electronics are showing yet again that they more to give.
I’m a happy camper. Mick
------------- Rega RP8 - Apheta 2 - Accession MC Enigma PS -Solo ULDE (Focal Utopia) - PS Audio M700 - Fical Kanta No2
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