Speaker Placement
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 listening area, so that the music is always surrounding you, regardless of the direc- tion you face.
The rule of thumb is to add one pair of loudspeakers 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 loudspeakers in a large room you will notice that when the sound is perfect 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 you will create more sonic ambiance while maintaining clarity and a rich sound everywhere (See Figure 5).
You can make the listener position less critical by using mono rather than stereo. This can be difficult to achieve with normal stereo amplifiers. However, Niles manufactures 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 loudspeakers. Try to bracket the room with the two speakers. Diagonal placement is a very effective way to stretch the coverage pat- tern of two speakers. You can also com- promise between direct sound (for detail and clarity) and reflected sound (the ambi-
ent or “all around you” effect). The loud- speakers can be placed near corners to create more reflected sound. By directing the tweeters to point away from the listen- er, so they create as much reflected sound as possible, you emphasize the ambient effect. The more reflected sound there is in the room the stronger the ambient effect at low volumes. You should use moderation, however, otherwise the compromise becomes too one sided and at high vol- umes, the sound will be blurred and less distinct.
Placement for Home Theater Rear Applications
In a home theater, the goal is to reproduce the experience of a great movie theater in our homes. The biggest difference between the two is the rear or surround loudspeaker array in a commercial theater. Here, it is not uncommon to see twenty or thirty loudspeakers around the audience. This huge array of speakers assures that you will feel completely surrounded by the ambient soundtrack of the movie. Film makers try to use the “surround” soundtrack to enve- lope you in the environment on screen. They will place background music, rain sounds, traffic noise, etc. on the “surround” soundtrack. In a home with a single pair of loudspeakers it is easy for the jungle sounds to sound like they are “in the mid- dle of your head” just like headphones!
A single pair of DS8.3 and DS8.5 Loudspeakers, properly placed, can create a very convincing simulation of an array of loudspeakers. If you place them near a hard reflecting surface you can make one pair of loudspeakers sound like several. Create as many reflections as possible by placing the loudspeakers near a corner so that the adjoining walls will act as a pow- erful reflector. Direct the tweeters so that sound is pointed away form the listener creating still more reflections and thus
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