Room Speaker Placement
NOTE TO READERS: The measures that I will discuss in this week’s blog are things that can be employed by anyone. Including those that consider themselves as the “non-do-it-yourself type.”
The great part is, that these room acoustic improving measures (excluding the purchase of speaker wire) are free of cost!
ROOM SPEAKER PLACEMENT
We have so far in the “Sound Advice” blog discussed the main acoustic problems rooms can suffer from, some corrective measure to solve these problems and how to test for acoustic problems.
A great but often overlooked way to improve the acoustic sound quality of your room is the placement and positioning of your speakers. The placement of speakers in your room greatly affects the tonal qualities and realistic sound reproduction of the audio your ears will perceive.
PLACEMENT OF TOWER (FLOOR) SPEAKERS
Tower speakers should be place at least a minimum of 12 inches out from the wall. This will allow the speakers to deliver optimal sound quality.
What happens if you place your speakers closer than the recommend minimum?
The closer to the wall you place your speakers the duller your middle and upper lower range sound tones become. With that said, if you have tower speakers in the lower price range category, that have small bass speakers, placing them closer to the wall will deliver a move powerful low range response.
If your towers have a two or three way speaker setup, they normally have separate controls on board for fine tuning your High-end, Mid-range and bass speaker. You will need to increase the level settings of your mid-range speaker to help compensate for the dullness created by you, when you ignore the minimum placement recommendation.
You will also want to be mindful of furniture placement. Avoid placing couches, love seats or chairs directly on the wall opposite your tower speakers. The wall apposing your speakers will reflect a lot of the speaker’s sound waves back into your ears from your rear, resulting in the delivery of over saturated bass response and poor overall sound quality to your ears. If you don’t have the space in your room to move your couch, love seat or chairs at least two feet from the wall, the placement of a wall hanging made out of thick fabric will help increase the quality of the sound your ears receive.
While shelving in your room serve help the overall acoustics, by acting as a natural sound diffuser, those really nice glass and glass top coffee tables can add unwanted reflection of the higher sound frequencies, especially when you crank up the volume on your sound system. To reduces this negative factor, you should cover the glass surfaces with a sham. My suggestion would be to use a sham made out of wool or a heavy cotton weave. You should also be aware, that windows pose an even greater problem of unwanted sound reflection, much more then glass tables and glass table tops, since they have a greater surface area. Heavy drapes or curtains are a very effective solution to this problem.
Another problem many people face, is the placement of their speakers next to their television, beside the power of the magnets from your speakers effecting the television’s picture. The sides of the television can cause and unwanted sound reflection effecting the room’s acoustics. The simple solution would be not to place your speakers next to your TV. If that is not an option for you due to your room’s layout, then the next best thing is to move your speakers forward, so they are no longer parallel with the sides of your TV.
SPEAKER ANGLING
Another great away that won’t cost you a penny to positively effect your rooms acoustics, is a technique called “Speaker Angling.” I used this myself to help out my friends at the “911 Media Arts Center” in Seattle, Washington, using this simple technique improved the acoustic profile of their theater and greatly reduced the level of flutter echo.
Instead of placing your speakers so they face the apposing wall, you will be angling the speaker toward each other. Using this technique can dramatically improve the sound quality that the speakers deliver to the listener’s ears, by reducing the area of initial sound reflections off parallel side walls or opposing wall ( which is the cause of flutter echo).
You will need an additional person beside yourself to employ this technique. First, sit yourself faces your speakers, then have the person helping you turn the speakers toward each other. You will hear the flutter echo decrease as the speakers are angled in toward each other. What you are listening for is, the “Magic position,” this is the point where there is the least amount of “flutter echo” and the best treble, mid-range and bass response.
There are is no set angle to set your speakers. Though, I find most people find their “magic point” some where between 5-45 degrees. It really depends on the speakers and size and dimension of your room as to how far in you will need to turn your speakers.
USING THE CORRECT SPEAKER WIRE
Another important factor in the delivery of good sound quality is using the proper gauge of speaker wire. In some cases, you just don’t have a choice in this matter, as some speaker manufacturers only sale pre-wired speakers. Then it becomes a matter of how far from the sound source you can place your speakers, based on the gauge of the speaker wire supplied by the manufacture.
I have seen wire as thin as 22 gauge used by some manufacturers of low price speakers. Most speaker wire world wide range from 20-12 gauge. The “gauge” is the thickness of the speaker wire. The lower the gauge number, the thicker the wire. The farther away from the sound source the speaker is drawing its signal from, the greater the loss of signal quality. To compensate for this loss you need to increase the thickness of the speaker wire you are using to deliver the signal to your speakers.
These are my recommend guidelines for the gauge of the speaker wire vs. distance from the source of the sound signal.
- less than 10 feet-22 gauge
- 10-20 feet-20 gauge
- 20-40 feet-18 gauge
- 40-80 feet-16 gauge
- 80-160 feet-14 gauge
- more than 180 feet -12 gauge
Next week’s blog will address the very serious problem of “FLUTTER ECHO” by giving “do-it-yourself” solutions to the reader in use of diffusing methods and materials.