Speaker Setup Tips for the Best Soundstaging and Imaging - SoundStage! Real Hi-Fi (Ep:19)
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- Опубліковано 10 лис 2021
- Do you enjoy the soundstage and imaging illusion a good stereo can provide? In this video, SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider tells you his secrets for attaining the best imaging precision and soundstage presentation - width and depth! - in almost any room. You will find out how far apart your speakers should be, how far from the walls they need to be, and how far away you need to be sitting from them.
#hifi #audiophile #soundstage - Наука та технологія
Thanks for your straight forward aprouch, it worked, only on certain cds. Not all CDs sound stage, imaging. Depends on the quality of the music. Some are recorded well, some simply arnt. Some you can find a good center, but sound stage will suffer, get modern well recorded music, it really helps, The Pink Floyd Pulse CD live is incredible on good CD players and speakers, it will blow your socks off. Anyway thank you for your time and help. Saved me alot of time. That balance of ft. Speaker to speaker, then distance to your listening position, being the same, simply works. Thanks again, and remember folks Pulse CD live. Get and enjoy! 🤘💪❤️😁
We agree!
Very good. You know what you're talking about.
I also like audio and sound for the reasons you do too
Great advice I guess a lot of people already no this but you really have to try it in order to be shocked and amazed I listen for many years with my speakers a foot apart right up against the wall I was really blown away one day when I experimented with us I never knew it made such a difference
Great point!
I just took your suggestions and applied to my room. I had my Sabrina speakers too close together. I set at 7 ft on center and 48 inch from front wall. OMG the soundstage and image so much better. Thanks 🙏. Greg
Excellent to hear!
Another great video as always! Keep it up! I would just add that the speaker type (panel, box, opeb-baffle,...) and not only that but also the tweeter type (dome, folded ribbon, ribbon,...) matter greatly. Moreover, a preamp can help with creating a better more 3d soundstage that the spakers than can project into the room. I found many tube preamps to do that for me, but also some ss preamps.
Mark. Your comment is super valuable as I try to choose gear to improve Soundstage.
- Tube pre amp ... which one ?
-Ss pre amp which one ?
-Tweeter choice..which is best from the list you gave
- speaker design, box, open baffle etc. Which is best ?
- I also heard concentric Tweeter and woofer is good ???
- are there any metrics for Soundstage and imaging. Terms like wide and deep are relative. Can we set a scale 1 to 10 wide and 1 to 5 deep, 1 to 5 imaging and test gear giving results, like we do with frequency responses. I realize it's subjective but a scale and a number would be much better than simply wide or super deep. In other words can we make this scientific because it's impossible to determine how to buy gear :
Source
Dac
Pre amp or integrated or power amp
Speakers
Cable , power supply etc.
Budget vs money no object
It would be good to have list of actual gear for say 5 different budget levels . The combinations of all the above are endless and since we can't really listen before we buy we need more metrics
Thanks Doug. Great video! Unfortunately, my small room is inflexible, so I have to have my speakers no more than 6 feet apart, and I'm probably 8-10 feet from them. They also flank my 32" flatscreen TV, which sits between them on a TV stand, which may cause some reflections, but it's all I have to work with. I also can't get them any closer to me, and further from the wall behind them (they're about 2 feet from it), or they'll be in the middle of the room. And, I'm sitting right in front of a window that covers the whole back wall of my room (behind me), but the window is covered by vertical blinds, which breaks up reflections behind me. I prefer a bit of a forward sound, bcause the rock and blues I listen to doesn't usually have a lot of depth in the recordings, and I prefer lead vocals and instruments coming from right at the plane or even a bit in front of the plane of the speakers. I really don't like hearing them coming from much behind the speakers. But, I do like depth in the sound of the ensemble, (for instance, the drums should be coming from behind other players) and I want to hear air around the instuments and a three dimensional effect. I don't want everything to sound flat, two dimensional, with everything bunched up right at the plane of the speakers. I want it to sound like eveything is floating in the air in front of me, between the front of the speakers and even some sounds appearing to sound coming from further behind the wall behind them, but not drastically behind it. So, I do like a bit of depth, but it probably isn't as important to me as those that listen to a lot of symphonies and other classical works
Respect your knowledge and effort to try and give useful tips for people. (laymen)
I noticed a glaring lack of one topic from this " tips " video as with most videos.
... Be nice if someone came along and filled in the gaps in these talking points. =)
Good video and explanation. Room acoustics have a huge effect on sound as well. Each room and each set of speakers are different. Certainly you know that already.
According to Doug: "True! But this video gets into acoustics somewhat by talking the interaction of the speakers with the room. What it doesn't talk about, however, are acoustical treatments you can do to the room."
Great video!
Love that Per Welinder deck! Good ol days
Awesome, aren't they. I have to add more to the museum soon.
I've tried it all. I get the best soundstage and imaging w/nearfield listening. Speakers are 6 feet apart, and my listening position is 4 feet in front of the speakers. Takes any room issues out of the equation.
You haven't indicated the size of you room, but I suspect with your setup, you have the speakers well away from the walls and by sitting closer than they are apart, you're allowing the speakers to truly dominate.
@@dougschneider8243 Absolutely! Now I'm listening to my system instead of my room. My sound stage may not be as wide as it used to be, but height and depth seem to have improved. My imaging has improved dramatically! Room size is 17.5' L x 14' W x 8' H. Each speaker is 46.5" from their proximal side wall, and 32.5" from the front wall. With my rig set up between, and so close to the speakers, I did notice I was getting a good amount of speaker vibration to my TT's cartridge resulting in terrible distortion. I moved the rig over to the side wall, and now my Turntable is 10' away from the closest speaker. BIG difference!!! For room treatment I have two GIK corner bass traps, and two GIK 244 absorption panels 48" x 24" at the 1st reflection points. I think I'm finally getting there.
Hi Doug ... excellent advice. I hope you don't mind if I add a couple of thoughts here...
1) Getting speakers well away from the front wall is not always an option, especially where the system is in a multi-purpose room, like a living room or rec room. In that case I generally suggest people draw up a little floor plan of their room and mark the areas where they would be willing to place speakers, without interfering with traffic and other uses for the room. Then within that space, they can play with the speaker placement to find the best spots available to them.
2) Symmetry is indeed crucial in establishing a good sweet spot. But the old "that looks the same" doesn't cut it. I generally get out the measuring tape and mark out speaker positions in 1/2 inch increments. This is because the wavelength at 20khz is about 2 3/4 inch and even a 1 inch difference could place your tweeters out of phase at the listening position. So as a target you want your crucial distances to be within 1/2 an inch... less is better. Some might argue, but that small difference is audible in the upper frequencies.
3) I generally favour keeping the distance between speakers closer to the distance from the listening position to a line across the front of the speakers... i.e. 6 feet forward means 6 feet apart. It might be just me but that always seems to sound the best.
Cheers... and thanks!
Regarding your 3rd point... Your description would result in a hypotenuse (distance from ear to speaker) that is greater than the distance between the two speakers. Am I interpreting you correctly? A visual representation would be two right triangles with the right angles between the speakers, rather than an equilateral triangle. This is counter to everything I have ever read on this subject, and I am wondering if you have found this to only be a personal preference, as you stated, or is there any science to this setting. I ask because I am constantly moving my speakers depending on what I am listening to, and I have noticed the same thing with certain recordings.
@@matthewpeterson3329
Yes the two right triangles is correct. You want to be right on that centre line, equal distance from both speakers with the speakers about the length of your centerline apart. It isn't the actual distances that matter, it's the relationship between you, the speakers and the room, you're working on.
But that's really just a starting point. The actual best location could be closer or further apart, closer or further away. It is really about getting your room and your speakers working together.
As you move the speakers closer together the centre image strengthens and you lose a little bit of left-right directivity.
As you move them further apart you will notice the left and right speakers begin to dominate with a weaker centre image.
Balance the centre and speaker levels for best soundstage.
As I said I work in ridiculously small increments, measuring as I go, when doing this, but when you hit that magic spot, you will know it.
For example: On my system the speakers are happiest with the front inside corner 8 1/2 inches either side of the TV stand, 15 inches from the wall and toed in to aim at my shoulders.
Wow… I’ve been an audiophile for sometime now, and have concluded almost everything that you have mentioned over many years.
I have about 9 feet behind my speakers, I’m roughly about 8 feet away from the centre point in between my speakers…. And then I have another 10 feet behind me. pretty much any speaker I put in this spot, gives me sound stage depth. Even inexpensive speakers will do it. I also make sure that each speaker is exactly the same distance away from my ears with a laser measuring device.
This video has definitely give me confidence to trust your advice. Keep up the great work.
Wow, that's great to hear! But everyone should remember -- this is to optimize soundstaging and imaging. To optimize bass, for example, much closer to the walls. For me, though, the setup I described in the video is what I prefer.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that. I also like you, choose to preference soundstage more then bass in my setup, because I also love to hear that depth and that spaciousness so much. To me, that’s what high-end Audio is all about.
Funny thing is, I usually listen to music with my eyes open because I found my perception of depth definitely ties in with how far I can see the front wall is.
The only thing is very few got that kind of room to allow 7 feet behind the speakers. I could do 3 or 4
Due to the shape of my apartment room(s), the base frequencies were cancelling out. So I had to reverse the wires on one woofer. Now I also seemed to have a push/pull effect. Anywhere I am located within the room, or even further away at my computer desk, the base is the same. No dead or reduced areas. Fortunately when I built these speakers back in 1978, I placed switches that allowed reversal of mid-range drivers and tweeters, and so I did not have to open the speaker box to set them properly to compensate for the speaker wires being reverse at the power amplifier. Each has one 15" woofer, two dome mid-range drivers, and four dome tweeters. I did recently improve the high frequencies a tad with a pair of Aperion Audio MKII Planar-Ribbon Super Tweeters that have up to 40kHz frequency response. That's 20kHz per ear. LOL
Very helpful information
Great to hear!
This is so helpful on so many levels. You really cover every single aspect of the topic. Could you share with us maybe 10-12 recordings where the soundstage seemed to extend beyond the rear wall as you state at 6:16? I want to hear the effect you are taking about.
From Doug: "Thanks for the feedback, Wes! In fact, thinking about a video based on that topic. But right off the bat the recording that stands out is the soundtrack to the movie 'The Mission.' You could use many tracks, but the one I always use is track 3, 'Gabriel's Oboe.' The timpani at the beginning, when I have speakers set up that really reveal depth well, sound like they're coming from 60 feet back."
Great explanation thank you, question how do you get that center voice or image to be directly on center? when called for in the recording.
I made a video about that! LINK: ua-cam.com/video/vQdX-XSoW5A/v-deo.html
Do certain types of speakers image better (or easier) than others? For example, panel speakers vs horn vs open baffle etc.
Good question. It might be the topic for a future video.
My MMG’s are 7’9” apart 9 feet from my nose. 45degree toe in.
Side wall reflections are the most important.
I have 42” behind the frequencies and 5 ft to the wall behind.
From Doug: "Side-wall reflections are important, but they can vary greatly from speaker design to speaker design. Panel-type speakers typically create a null around their sides, which means their contributions to their sides are different from traditional direct radiators. Setup for those types of speakers is quite different."
Magnepans don't have any sidewall reflections ,Doug is 100 percent correct they have a null "void" being dipoles. .
Thanks for tips.
My room is on the small side, 16X13ft, so I have placed my speakers about 4 feet from the front wall. The soundstage depth is ok- I can hear as deep as the front wall (behind the speakers). I’ll try to move the speakers deeper into the room, but I will then have to push the couch closer to the wall behind me.
How have you found the bass to be affected when you move a bit back from the equidistant triangle position?
According to Doug: "Since moving speakers around doesn't cost anything, simply experiment. Since you do have 16 feet in length (I assume), try getting 5 or 6 feet from the wall behind the speakers. Don't go wider than 8 feet with the speakers. This should still leave about 3 feet behind your head. You can try putting absorptive material on the wall behind your head since you'll be closer to it. As for bass, it lightens up as you get the speakers more into the room, but sometimes that's a good thing -- less boominess."
@@soundstagenetwork my room is small also but im utilising rule of 1/3s and to my ears this method in a small room sounds great.
@@genkifd There are many different ways to go about it! Glad it's working out.
@@genkifd Could you explain a little more about the 1/3 rule? Can you give please an example?
@@faustorment in short the speakers should be set back roughly 1/3 of the depth of you room from the front wall and your seating position is 1/3 from the rear wall.
ideally the speakers should be setback 1/3 from the side walls also. remember these are rough guides.
Good, but what if the recording itself is screwed up? This is the case usually in modern recording usually? Meaning that what we hear it is not where the instrument are placed during the recording session.
That's a different story. The speakers can only reproduced what's on the recordings.
I replied to Mark mywords comment below. I thought I'd also post my reply ...
... Mark. Your comment is super valuable as I try to choose gear to improve Soundstage.
- Tube pre amp ... which one ?
-Ss pre amp which one ?
-Tweeter choice..which is best from the list you gave
- speaker design, box, open baffle etc. Which is best ?
- I also heard concentric Tweeter and woofer is good ???
- are there any metrics for Soundstage and imaging. Terms like wide and deep are relative. Can we set a scale 1 to 10 wide and 1 to 5 deep, 1 to 5 imaging and test gear giving results, like we do with frequency responses. I realize it's subjective but a scale and a number and list the gear and room dimensions and speaker placement , in your opinion, would be much better than simply wide or super deep. In other words can we make this scientific because it's impossible to determine how to buy
Source
Dac
Pre amp or integrated or power amp
Speakers
Cable , power supply etc.
Budget vs money no object
It would be good to have list of actual gear for say 5 different budget levels . The combinations of all the above are endless and since we can't really listen before we buy we need more metrics
Very good and informative, but that doesn't work for me. My room is 11 x 11. How can I deal with that?
Gilberto
Very, very tough size of room to deal with -- very small and square, which indicates to me a problem with standing waves. Besides placing the speakers well, you'd likely need many acoustic treatments.
Do you measure the distance from speakers from the distance between the tweeter or the corner of the front baffle?
As Doug mentioned in the video, the distance between the speakers is center to center, which is usually tweeter to tweeter. You can use the tweeter as the point to measure to the listener as well, though pretty much anywhere on the front of the baffle will measure close to the same.
not anybody has 7 feet of space to leave behind speakers for that sound stage, sadly
I agree. But if you do...
Symmetry is fine in theory (and in an anechoic chamber....) but in reality real rooms can vary the channel balance because of construction and furnishings. I have set speakers perfectly symmetrically and got a channel imbalance of 3dB! So in reality...forget symmetry and move speakers front and back to get the central imaging for YOUR room! 👍
Bob Robbins has a noteworthy UA-cam video on speaker placement.
Bob is the man!
biggest headache,,, to find great recordings
For soundstage and imaging? There are many that I have that illustrate well.
@@dougschneider8243 pls list some,,,
Soundstage and depth are not an illusion. They are set up by a combination of direct and reflected sound. Soundstage width comes from the corner secondary reflections. Depth comes from the front wall reflections. Your speaker positioning experience illustrates this.
No, it's most an illusion. While the reflections can contribute to a sense of spaciousness -- and the farther walls are away will delay reflections and perhaps make that seem even more so -- how do wall reflections know what's at one position of the stage or another in a recording. For example, say the singer is at the front, the drums behind, the guitar somewhere to one side. If distance from a wall creates the depth -- and it's not a mental illusion that comes from the recording ---- then the voice, drums, guitar and all get pushed back. The fact is the sound enters your ears and is processed by the brain. This processing by the brain creates the illusion of, say, depth from timing cues that are captured in the recording. It's an illusion created by your brain.
@@dougschneider8243 NO. Stereophonic is not the same as binaural. It does not work by piping sound from the speakers to your ears. It is a field type system that works by setting up sound fields within your room using direct and reflected sounds, positioned by means of speaker positioning, radiation pattern including direct to reflected ratios, and the acoustic qualities of the room. You can hear all of these effects but you can't measure them.
@@geickmei I'm not sure what all that means in terms of what you said, but binaural works by attempting to eliminate interaural crosstalk, which is an inherent part (and problem) with stereo playback. That said, it's still an illusion constructed in your brain.
@@dougschneider8243 No, crosstalk is not a problem with stereo. Stereo has nothing to do with binaural. It is a different system. It is sound fields in rooms. You don't have to worry about crosstalk in stereo any more than in live sound. It is NOT signals for the ears. It is sound fields in rooms. Study acoustics, not the human hearing mechanism. Mimic all of the recorded fields using speakers and just sit down and listen.
@@geickmei Honestly, I don't know what you're even talking about now. Is this perhaps an AI chatbot that got in here? In other to learn something, please look up interaural crosstalk -- and, yes, if you do, you'll find out that it does, in fact, affect stereo reproduction if both your ears work.
You tips are good, but they are limited by the actual speaker itself. I've seen good room placement make an average speaker sound good, but never great. Really good sound comes from really good speakers well - placed.
While that's true that a better speaker will sound better if they're setup optimally, it's possible that a better speaker will sound worse than another if its placement isn't optimal.
No speaker regardless of its potential will sound any good if its not feed the best possible signal, that means that the source is the single most important part of any hifi system, if you don't start with a top quality signal, you will never hear what your speakers and amplification are capable of. Speaker placement is hugely important too, but without the best signal even optimally positioned speakers will never deliver their true potential.
@@jerrypartington3650 pls define 'best possible signal'. Are you talking about the source, the amp, or the wiring?
@@stevenholt5484 The signal originates at the source, so the quality of reproduction in any hifi system is ultimately totally dependent on how accurately the source is able to retrieve information encoded in the medium, be it microscopic modulations on a record or a stream of ones and zeroes. Anything lost at this stage cannot be retrieved down stream, so following this logic, and counterintuitively the speakers are the least important part of the system.
@@jerrypartington3650 Oh, boy. By the time the signal reaches your speakers it's already defined, be it good, bad, whatever. This video is about speaker setup, not about source quality. That's taken as given. But your last statement, 'the speakers are the least important part of the system', that takes the cake. If that is true, then why don't you just buy a $5000 front end and not buy any speakers at all? After all, they're the least important part of the system!
Most loudspeakers, of any type of design formation, will not sound their best when the speaker is more than 4 to 5 feet from the back wall to front baffle. The bass will suffer indeed, but tonal balance needs some structure of a treated wall side to side or front to back. The stereo illusion on a well designed speaker will be outstanding USUALLY, WHEN that baffle is no more than 4 feet from the back wall, in my experience,. An isosceles triangle can work as well as an equilateral triangle. Just make sure your listening seat is no more than 2 or 3 feet further away than the loudspeaker distance between them. (Robert Harley......quite right). Near field listening is simply for engineers not music rooms where concert hall ambiance is primary. Hopefully your room is a minimum of 20 feet in length.
You have to hear my setup then. Once people hear it, they never tell me to push my speakers closer to any walls.
If you don’t take on. Board what this man is saying everything else you do to improve your listening experience will be a waste of time .
The master set is better and the end all for speaker placement, period end of discussion
We are not sure what that means.