Positioning speakers

Good stereo sound depends a lot on the position of the speakers in your listening room. Not only the stereo image effected, but the complete tonal balance can be tuned by moving your speakers around.

Moving them back to the wall or towards the corner will increase the bass, moving them forward brings out the mid frequencies. You can consider this like a smooth equaliser function. This ability to balance sound by positioning them eliminates the need for an equaliser for me. And that is a good thing, because anything that is not absolutely necessary in the chain might deteriorate the sound. Good equalisers also cost a lot of money, which I would rather spend on amps or speakers to improve the system.

Below you will find some general rules of thumb:

1. Avoid corners.
   Most of the readers will already know that you are not supposed to place your speakers in a corner of the room. Try to keep away from them for at least a meter. If you have the luxury of a complete free wall, the best spot is usually about at W/6 where width is the distance between the corners of the wall behind your speakers.
2. Use only one wall.
   Do not place speakers against different walls of the room unless absolutely necessary.
   
3. Keep the distance relatively small.
   In small rooms 1 to 2 m. will be enough to give a nice homogeneous stereo image a few meters wide. Even in large rooms 3 m. is often plenty. When you sit in the middle in front of the speakers you should not hear the speakers individually. All instruments should be distributed evenly in the stereo image. They should also seem to stand to the left of the left channel and to the right of the right channel.
   
4. Respect your speaker type.
   If you have bookshelf speakers. Do not place them on the floor. Place them so that your ear is about the same height as the tweeters when in your listening seat. If you can, use speaker stands for the best result. Choosing the right stand is a complicated subject, so I will elaborate on that in an other post. Most of the time the solution proposed by the manufacturer of the speakers will give the best result.
   
5. Search for symmetry.
   If possible, locate your speakers symmetrical so that the distance to the rear wall, and the corners is the same for both channels.
6. In a rectangular room, use the shortest wall when possible. You will get a better bass response if the speakers project the sound in the length of the room.
7. Experiment with position to obtain the best result.

One of the best ways to find a good position is the tune method. Start by positioning them at a distance of 2 m. facing straight forward and at a symmetrical distance to the rear wall and the side walls. Listen to the position, then start tuning the distance between the speakers by moving them closer 10 cm at a time (or wider). Stop when you have a continuous stereo image from left to right. We will fine tune this later.

Then start moving the speakers back or forward towards the wall. Choose steps of 10 or 15 cm. to begin with. Listen with the tune method and determine the best. Keep moving in the same direction, until you feel that the sound gets worse. Then go back in smaller steps.
Good, now you should already have a nice sound.

You can now fine tune the result by moving the speakers inwards or outwards in steps of 5cm. each. Do not start toeing in the speakers yet!
After this the sound will be close to optimal.

Now you can start toeing in the speakers. In most cases this is not necessary, because modern tweeters spread sound very good. I leave good speakers often aligned with the wall for the best result. For the best result, I even measure the distance now and make it exactly the same.
May be it is a good idea to mark this position now, so that you can find it easily after cleaning the room.

That is it. Try it at home and let me know what your results were...

Enjoy!