SH Spotlight Play the Kinks "Waterloo Sunset" in stereo, check and fix or improve your stereo playback with it!

i just got my new diy amazing speakers. they played awesome but they werent correctly set. i followed this advice from a post i found in stereophile.com:

To adjust toe in I use The Beatles-"Abbey Road" and the song "Her Majesty." The vocal and guitar start

off in one channel and slowly pan all the way to the other channel. If the vocal move towards the

listener as it gets close to the middle there is too much toe in, if the vocal moves away from the

listener there is too little toe in. It should sound as if McCartney's vocals roll smoothly and

continuously across the sound stage. If it sounds like he jumps from Right to Center to Left the speakers

are too far apart.

after i did that, followed our hosts advice.
in total, i can only say WOOOOOOOOOW
My speakers were not in a strict triangle with same sides, so i needed to play a little. But now i am just shocked in what i hear. i put revelations from iron maiden and its like i never heard it before. Thank you Mr Steve Hoffman, thank you guys. i am in heaven

 

I don't know of it's my copy or what but the whole song starting with the vocals tend to crescendo all the way through. I even switched speakers and it does the same thing going the other way.

 

Ok, so this is my first post on the forums! After reading these forums for the last few months I had to join just so I could say how much this advice worked for my speaker setup. I got some Polk Audio T50s last Christmas and the stereo imaging has never sounded better thanks to using "Waterloo Sunset" to help with the toe-in. The room I'm in doesn't lend itself to much speaker movement right now, but this really worked.

The only problem I had was having to reduce the toe-in a bit when I started getting headaches and what seemed like a loss of vocals in the soundstage. After some slight tweaking it sounds great and I'm not getting the headaches.

Using "Waterloo Sunset" was a great tip!

 

Seriously, headaches. I can't explain it, but when the speakers are toed in too much the soundstage bothers my hearing to the degree that I get a headache, like listening fatigue. I stopped listening to music for a day until the headache went away, then put the speakers back in their old position and no headache. But when I toed them in again too far the headache returned. I (painfully) kept experimenting until I found a position that didn't bother me. I thought maybe I had it turned up too high so I could hear the soundstage better, or I was subconsciously straining too hard to hear the details in the music, but I think I ruled both of those out.

Maybe toeing the speakers in too far makes it too bright for my ears, maybe it's the fact that in the past I've had benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, I have no idea. All I know is that if I'm not careful how far I toe in the speakers, then I am bound to get a headache.

 

Now that I've toe'd in a bit I'm hearing so much more detail.
Amazing.

 

I'm using my Apple office computer at home. Listened to Waterloo Sunset and what I seem to hear is Ray's lead vocal WAY behind me and to the right. Quite the effect. Same thing with Jimi Hendrix's vocal on Purple Haze.

 

Steve, rookie question. Recently had two ceiling speakers installed for surround and wired back to amp during major renovation of rec room. I assumed the red and black cables were correctly wired to the speakers— but in case they weren’t Is there a way to check surround phase on a 5.1 set-up? any tips greatly appreciated.

 

I Found a solution. I have the Disney WOW A/V set up disc and it has a 5.1 polarity test on there. The surround speakers were out of phase.