World famous setup expert Jim Smith filmed a video with me where he shares his formula for speaker placement based on thousands of detailed system setups he has done over 50 years.
The drawing is in the video. X is distance between tweeters, Y is distance between your right ear and right speaker. X/Y is 83%. Nothing earth shattering or magic going on in that video . The premise is that your listening position is in the spot in the room that has the most smooth 20hz-250hz range. Now then....how to decide on that listening spot when you don't know where to put your speakers first to give you that smooth result ?! Oh, I just measured mine, I'm at 82.5%, using nothing but my ears . He is right that speakers set up using an equilateral triangle don't sound quite right or exciting.
Is Jim ever going to make good on his Kickstarter project? He took money from a lot of people many years ago, and we never got anything more than occasional excuses and vague promises.
I don't know about this particular idea working all that well. You don't always get to choose where your chair is placed. Most rooms have options but they may be limited by window placement or doors etc. Few rooms are purpose built with the chair location being paramount. Lots of times it's just your living room! I would suggest you START by measuring your first attempt at setup with a sound pressure meter and graph it out looking for the smoothest response like Jim says---from 20-250hZ. You will find modes where the low frequencies pile up and BOOM---and you will no doubt find NULLS where there is a big HOLE in the bass. So obviously you need to know how to setup AROUND these problems and avoid these areas as you continue "tuning." Just don't put your chair or your speakers in a problem location that distorts the sound! What I find interesting is that these problem areas STAY PUT for the most part. You just have to find out where they ARE. For that reason I would prefer my clients start with the Sumiko system which doesn't care a fig where things go---you just work with what you've got. Basic room setup rules still apply like using the short wall is nice, a triangle is nice, creating a proscenium layout is nice and not putting your equipment smack dab in the middle of your center imaging wall is nice. (You guys with your racks busting up your center image know who you are! That center "fill" should be a flat reflection if possible! My own rack has the middle section EMPTY so it reflects the sound correctly).) I myself have tuned over a thousand setups too---so THERE JIM! My own house system now that I have retired has been a source of amazement and discovery. Turns out you can go WAY beyond the basics if you keep trying out experiments and listening to the critical areas Jim talks about---from 20 to 250 hertz. And then listen to the mids and treble to compliment the strength of your bottom tones. After twenty years (20 YEARS!) of moving my personal setup around a quarter inch at a time, I have found a new way to get Harbeths to sound like an omni-directional speaker. This breaks every rule you can make. The speakers are laid down on their sides. the tweeters are closer to the center and aimed to splash a little bit into the center fill field. The subs fill out the outline of the walls. The image is frightening! Terrifying! Too real to be believed. Spooky real! It is holographic from all areas of the room even to the next room you feel the solidity of the images in 3D! Two speakers in surround sound. Sounds come from behind your head once in a while and it can freak you out! Everybody SAYS-"you should always stand speaker upright so the drivers line up and become time coherent." WRONG! Everybody SAYS-"You should start with no toe-in and try adding a bit but not more than pointed at your head..." WRONG. Point them practically AT each other and see what happens! In my room the Harbeths unite their tone from tweeter to woofer BETTER laying down as I can get the correct blend of the two drivers AND at the same time push a little extra treble into the center where it would normally FALL OFF. I don't WANT it to FALL OFF! I want a better more evenly dispersed CENTER. What I WANT is two "areas" of sound---a LEFT area and a RIGHT area. I'm trying to FILL the areas evenly with tones from top to bottom AND I DON'T CARE WHAT IT TAKES TO DO THAT! Here's what it looks like and yes, it works in BOTH my listening rooms! I simply could not believe my ears after hearing the main room so I setup my nearfield using the same toe-in and center reflection. It did the same thing in the NEARFIELD. Spooky imaging and perfect tones and much more even DISPERSION which is, I believe---KEY! Take this for what its worth guys---if you try it and it works for you too just remember The Doc and his crayzeeeee ideas work in the world, not just in his head! This idea to sum up is "DISPERSION is more important than having a "point source." Or let's say it's just DIFFERENT so that nobody has their feathers ruffled over what is better and so forth. But---it IS better than the old-fashioned triangle and done method! The Doc. Control room
Gone south? Why? What is YOUR idea of speaker placement? Jims ideas are great. John Hunter at Sumiko taught me a lot when I trained under his direction as I think John's setup routine ideas are terrific too. And then I spent a couple decades on this very subject myself. What's the problem? There seem to be a lot of differing ideas on how you can do a room properly. And there are different reasons for preferring one method to another. My preference is to have a reference grade soundfield to judge recordings and make recordings. Plus I love being amused by how great everything can sound by pushing the room acoustics to make spectacular sounds. I like spectacular. I love room setups and devoted a large chunk of my life to the subject. Am I taking us off topic somehow? I have consistently recommended Jim's book Get Better Sound starting out on this Forum on that very topic over a decade ago. I am just as crazy about getting results as anybody I have met in our industry. And a lot more interested in the subject than a lot of our fellow audiophiles will ever be. So what?
I'm confused. Please help me with this formula. If the distance between the tweeters is 7 feet, the distance from the tweeter to the ear will be 83% of 7 feet?
I think it is the other way-- that is, your seat is positioned further away than the distance between the speakers.
D between speakers / D to seat ~ 0.83 D speakers 7' D to seat 10' 7/10 = 0.7 mine is 7/11 ~ 0.64 if I move the speakers 1' further apart, 8' And the seat 1' closer, 10' 8/10 ~ 0.8 that seems too close Another is 1.5 x speaker D ~ 1/1.5 ~ 0.67 Speaker D 7' Seating D 11' 7/11 ~ 0.64
I would need to move each speaker 15 inches to the center to make a perfect .83. I have had them in a similar position before but farther out sounds better- bigger sound stage and better bass because they are a bit closer to the corners. I may try it again though.
Looks like you are taking advantage of the Harbeth's wider horizontal dispersion to give you more vertical dispersion. Can't argue with that but your horizontal dispersion may have some dead zones and hot zones out of the sweet spot. You know your stuff and wouldn't have that configuration if it didn't sound good.
The test records I use for setup have the musicians arrayed across a wide stage, a nightclub and a concert hall. The idea is to check that every player is precisely where he or she ought to be in the soundfield. The clearer the better as it adds realism. It is a hoot to listen to a symphony of maybe 80 instruments and be able to precisely locate each one and they don't MOVE! Much more precise than going to Carnegie Hall as the mics have better seats than anybody would get at the show. One of my recordings they "flew" the mics on wires from the ceiling. good luck getting THOSE seats. But they sure are CLEAR! I know this room so well after using this particular one the last five years. It's the best room the system has been in so far. The new setup came as a challenge to see what more I could squeeze out of a recent purchase of a different preamplifier than my normal reference---a Bryston BP25p. The new Audio Research Ref 3 preamp focused energy in DIFFERENT parts of the same room and even altered the phase of the low bass. EVERYTHING had to be moved to make the new preamp sing as it hated the arrangement the Bryston had been using. Gear is finicky! Rooms have a set "bounce" and set nodes and modes. It is weird to be able to use the room to change frequency response-but that is exactly what happens in my world. Getting the new preamp to work well with my old gear was FUN! I had to move the whole darn setup for a couple months but THIS is what I wound up with. Audio is CRAY-ZEE!
Very unique arrangement. I’ll have to try this sometime. I’ve got a modest, simple setup, but it would be easy enough to play around with this and see what impact it has. Definitely interesting…
Be sure to give an update. The very idea you can get a brand new entire system just for the trouble of moving boxes is a HOOT!
Can someone please clarify for us math-impaired dummies? Does this mean sitting closer than the distance between speakers ? Or further than the distance between speakers ?
I know this formula won't work in my room, close but not perfect. Thankfully, I have Wilson DAW speakers that I can adjust the rake angle.
