MK Sound LFE-4 operation manual 11. M&K’S General Guidelines for Speaker Placement

Bass Management Controller

Track three:	1 kHz sine wave recorded at –20dB FSD. Use this to set the reference level of your source
	(console, etc.) On an analog console this will be 0VU. On digital sources this will be either
	–20dB FSD or –18dB FSD.

10.SPEAKER PLACEMENT

There is considerable debate within the professional audio community as to the best speaker placement for multichannel mixing. Some mixers use placement solutions that are understood and well accepted, while others remain unconvinced about a speaker placement standard and prefer to try other options.

One of the biggest obstacles to accurate monitoring in the control room is the recording console. With its large, flat surface and its placement in the middle of the room, it provides the largest reflective surface between you and your speakers. Reflected sound coming off the console arrives later than direct sound. The combination of direct and reflected sound creates distortion in the form of comb-filtering. For this reason, we recommend that you do not place your speakers on the console itself, but rather on stands around the console or wall-mounted on brackets above the console. M&K manufactures a full line of stands and brackets which are designed to solve practically any installation problem. Check with your M&K dealer or log onto the M&K Professional website, www.mkprofessional.com for details.

ITU-R BS.775-1 Speaker Placement

Many professionals find the ITU-R BS.775-1 recommendation useful as either a final placement solution or as a starting point from which to work. This recommendation is based on placing the speakers at equal distances around a 2.5 meter circle with the height of each speaker at 1.2 meters. The center speaker is placed directly in front of the listener with the left and right speakers placed 30 degrees on either side of the center speaker. Placement of the surrounds is somewhat more flexible. The ITU recommends that the surrounds be placed anywhere between 100 and 120 degrees from the location of the center speaker with 110 degrees being the most common solution. Placing the surrounds farther behind the mixer (120 to 135 degrees) may cause the single enveloping sound field to collapse leaving the listener with two distinct and seemingly unrelated soundfields.

FIGURE 7: ITU-R BS.775-1 SPEAKER PLACEMENT RECOMMENDATION

The ITU-R BS.775-1 placement solution works very well in critical listening environments where the listening position is known and is especially effective for those working in applications like music composition and mixing, sound design, broadcast and DVD authoring.

11.M&K’S GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR SPEAKER PLACEMENT

In a multi-channel listening environment, all speakers should be of the same model and placed equidistant from the listener. This is to maintain coincidental arrival of all channels at the listening position. If the center chan- nel must be a smaller speaker, we recommend using the MPS-1520 center channel speaker. It’s timbre is matched to that of our other main monitors.

The speakers should be placed so that their tweeters are all on the same lateral plane, vertically oriented. When using M&K’s multi-tweeter models, be sure to line up the center tweeters as these provide the majority of the high frequency information.

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