What is the Deal on "stacking" speakers?

Over the years, from time to time, I have seen pictures of music systems where people have more than one pair of speakers (stereo, not surround), many of them stacked on top of each other. Why? Is there a benefit to doing this?

 

That would be working speakers using non-working speakers as speaker stands. Much like the old broken TV as a TV stand for the working TV.

 

I've not heard it, but it was a fairly common practice. Large Advents come to mind.

STACKED ADVENTS AS REVIEWED BY THE ABSOLUTE SOUND MAGAZINE

 

Not in the home setting, but bands such as The Who and The Grateful Dead were infamous for using a wall of stacked Marshall amps.

 

Only the Polk 7B's are used in my office system, so it's a space saving thing and stands for the 7B's in my case.

 

I use my JBL L19s as stands for my wooden stands that my Wharfedale Dentons rest on. Kinda cool looking too!

 

I use five "stacks" of Koss CM/1030s. Stacked tweeter-to-tweeter.

See the link to my main HT below. I've detailed the advantages in the write-up that accompanies the photos.

Jeff

 

I use Mackie 824 active monitors. I’ve heard they sound great stacked. I’d love to find out

 

I just stacked a pair of Definitive Technology D11 bookshelf speakers on top of an old pair of Cerwin Vega speakers I pulled out of storage. I did this because I have one music area that's also used for movies & multi-channel listening. I went with a separate two channel amp for stereo music connected to the D11's and an AVR connected to the other five speakers. I'm hesitant to write this on an audiophile forum and assume that the D11's would sound a little better on proper stands. I'm going to let my wife adjust to this set up (silence so far lol) and then probably set my stands back up.

 

Initially, when I first got them, I stacked my new JBL 2800's on top of my old Marantz speakers as a cheap alternative, just to get the JBL's off of the floor. At one time, I had 4 matching Marantz speakers which a one place I lived, I had each one hanging from the ceiling in each corner of the room. As my sound systems grew, as well as large electronics and collectables, the speakers became dwarfed by the things around them. I had to get the speakers WAY off the floor and out of my face. Due to the limited height of speaker stands and many of exorbitant prices, I decided to build my own 5 foot tall stands and placed them in the front corners of the room. They worked out perfectly and people who came over were impressed, wondering why speaker stand manufacturers didn't make tall stands. I made a few more for friends. Well, my JBL 2800's were replaced by a pair of huge Audio-Matrix 12" 4-way speakers. By then, my stereo system had turned into a 5.1 surround system and the JBL's became the rear channels, replacing a pair of 4" Sony speakers. Then, I added a quadraphonic system. The JBL's became the front channels once more, now used in the quad system, and I stacked them on top of the Audio-Matrix speakers and were now about 7 feet from the floor. I got a 2nd pair of JBL 2800's , used, before the values of JBL speakers escalated. I built a shelf across the back of the room and put the 2nd pair of JBL's up there. Everything has worked out great and sound great. Set up like a home theater, it sounds like a home theater should. My home theater system has grown to a 7.1 system and so I've had to add 4 more speakers. Using the JBL speakers as rear channel speakers was way beneath their quality, so I replaced them with first, a pair of Bose 201's and then I bought a second set of them for the side speakers, all hanging from high up the walls.
The stacking and raising of speakers was not only for sound reasons but also to get them out of the way and/or to make room for them.

 

Hanging out with deejays who sometimes have a side-business catering weddings and sock-hops, an extra tweeter assembly sitting atop some powerful full-range monitors is not a unique experience...look around at your next bar mitzva...

-Annnd!, with the occasional newb exploring the Atmos capability of their new A-V receivers, you'll sometimes run into a ceiling-firing booster perched atop the fronts and rears down in the rumpus room.

 

I pretty much always have speakers stacked. Mostly now use speakers as stands, like here:




But I have also stacked pairs of working speakers for the sonic effect, like here, with 2 pairs of KLH Model Six's:



Or the ultimate, AR 3's and 3a's(that was a good one...):



Here's 2 pairs of working speakers, placed on a pair of non working speakers:



And finally, a more traditional stacking arrangement, but it scared me so I took them down:

 

Be very careful when you stack DCM TimeFrames.

 

And Magnepans.

 

I stacked large Advents years ago in a tower configuration with the tweeters in the center. That setup could play loud. It was great until the woofers blew.

 

Quad ESL-57swere sometimes stacked in a frame. Mark Levinson used this (with Hartley subwoofers and Sequerra supertweeters added as well). I never hear this, although a shop in the arcade next to the old Southern Cross Hotel in central Melbourne used to have stacked Quads.

 

to quote the blue collar tour guys: "you know you're a redneck when your working TV is sitting on top of the broken TV"

 

That was the system I had during my College days. It was, I thought, pretty incredible. I stacked them tweeter to tweeter. Bi-Amped - tubes on top, SS for the Woofs.

Loved it.

 

Out of curiosity, how are you guys wiring up your stacked pairs? In series or parallel?

 

Stacked vertically woofer to woofer original advents +6 dB bass response. This is the science that the speaker arrays flown over your head at arena concerts is based on.

I am not an acoustician, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

 

I think you might take note that every single "stacked" speaker configuration on this thread are vintage, i.e., old speakers.
Guys using speakers as speaker stands don't really count.
Stacking large Advents goes back to the 70's.
It's 2018, personally I would wonder no more.

 

Neither.

Each speaker in the stack gets a (identical) dedicated amp channel. The "splitting" happens at a line, not speaker, level. The preferred approach for a variety of reasons.

 

Stacked customized Dahlquist DQ 10s have been around for quite a few years. I've been intrigued to try them ( I've owned a pair for about 15 years) but that would be a bridge too far in the WAF department in our living room.

 

I recently bought two Sonos speakers and put them on top of my Klipsch towers. The reason is that the towers are already positioned for balanced stereo sound where I sit. There's no need to reinvent that and find a new spot for the new speakers. I'm not 'stacking' them; I just already know where stereo speakers should go in my room so they're sharing that same space. (The Klipsches are also a good height for the new ones and are more than sufficiently sturdy to support them.) They are not even connected to the same source.