Speaker Placement
image is created. Here are some guidelines to make the process of placement quick and easy.
Make sure the sound will not be blocked or reflected off of furniture or other objects. You should have a direct line of sight with the front of the speaker. To determine the best position, measure the “listening” dis- tance between the ideal listening position (your favorite chair or couch) and the wall in which you plan to install the speakers. Try to place the speakers so that they are equally distant from your listening spot and at least one half of the listening distance apart (this maintains a large pleasant stereo “image”). In home theater applications where there is a center channel you may choose to space the left and right main speakers farther apart for a “bigger than life” sound with Dolby® encoded movies and TV shows. However, for combined music and movie usage stay within the good placement zone for music. For exam- ple; if you are ten feet back from the wall, the speakers should be between five and ten feet apart (See Figure 2).
The Boundary Effect
Corners can affect the bass response of the speaker powerfully! This is called the boundary effect. You will emphasize par- ticular bass frequencies and cancel out other bass frequencies when you place speakers close to the wall/ceiling boundary or a corner wall boundary. This can make the speaker sound excessively boomy and inaccurate to some listeners, while to oth- ers it just seems like more bass sound. A good rule of thumb is if you always listen to your current pair of speakers with the bass turned up, you’ll enjoy corner place- ment. If you keep your preamp or receiv- er’s tone controls at neutral, try to keep the speakers at least one or two feet from the boundaries of the room. The
on the speakers performance. (For more information, see Setting the Tone Controls on page 15).
Placement for Varying Listening Positions
If you want the freedom to sit anywhere in a room facing any direction, and/or find that you prefer the “all around you” sound of some car stereos to a conventional “sound stage” facing you, consider the speaker placement techniques professional installers use in restaurants and bars. They place speakers in an array around the lis- tening area, so that the music is always sur- rounding you, regardless of the direction you face.
The rule of thumb is to add one pair of speakers for every 100 to 200 square feet of listening area. Curiously, this is not so that you can play the music louder, but so that you can play it softer! When you have only one pair of speakers in a large room you will notice that when the sound is per- fect in one part of the room, it is too loud near the speakers. By placing more than one pair in the room you will avoid these “hot spots” of loud sound and create more sonic ambiance while maintaining clarity and rich sound everywhere.
You can make listener position even less critical by using mono rather than stereo. This can be difficult to achieve with normal stereo amplifiers. However, Niles manu- factures Systems Integration Amplifiers which enable one room to be wired in stereo while other rooms are wired in mono! Consult your local Niles dealer for more information.
In smaller rooms or rooms that are infre- quently used, you typically can’t justify the expense of more than two speakers. Try to bracket the room with the two speakers. Diagonal placement is a very effective way to stretch the coverage pattern of two speakers. You can also compromise between direct sound (for detail and clari- ty) and reflected sound (the ambient or “all
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