Essential Guide: Speaker Set-Up Secrets

If your sound system isn’t hitting the highs, the blame might not lie with your carefully chosen hardware, but something as simple as the way your loudspeakers are positioned. That small patch of carpet, or hardwood flooring, somewhere between sofa and wall, may hold the key to unlocking true stereo satisfaction. It’s here, at that just-right height and perfect angle, that your favourite band locks in place, and voices hang magically in the air – the hallowed stereo sweet spot. The trick, of course, is knowing how to find it…

Speakers, regardless of how large or small they are, can be surprisingly fussy to get working properly in a room. A bookshelf model may look the part, perched between your treasured tomes, but shift it a little and the sound can literally change shape. Every speaker is essentially a collaboration of drivers, designed to move air.

In a 3-way design, for example, the tweeter handles delicate, high-frequency stuff, leaving the meat of the performance to the midrange driver, with a woofer designated for adding weight. Of course, there are umpteen variations on this theme and mitigating factors that have influence – such as driver size and proprietary technologies – yet all rely on sympathetic positioning to achieve optimum performance.

Magic Triangle

At the heart of the art of speaker positioning is the distance between the two stereo speakers and the listener. For example, small standmounters may sound great when you’re just a couple of metres away from them, but will struggle to energise the room if you’re listening further away. Likewise, big floorstanders sound wrong if you’re not far away enough – something that’s impossible in a cramped den.

Typically, the closer you sit to your speaker, the more direct and intimate the sound becomes. The further away you are, the more spacious the sound is. The trick is to get the balance right in your listening room.

When you’ve got the right size speakers for your room, it’s a case of placing them in the right position(s) relative to your favoured listening position. Imagine an equilateral triangle, with your two speakers positioned at its base, and you at the point. The angle – what is widely known as ‘toe-in’ – determines when voices come into focus; what you’re looking for is the singer to appear centre stage, between those speakers.

The rest of the soundstage should then snap into place. Of course, the wider your loudspeakers are apart from each other, the greater the soundstage. But you can’t push too far because with too much toe-in, things can get sharp; too little and that central image collapses. If speakers are placed too close together, the stereo image narrows, becoming almost monophonic. Too far apart, and vocal integrity can become imprecise. Getting this triangle right is a prerequisite for proper stereo sound.

It’s worth sliding your enclosures this way or that until it sounds right. It’s often a game of millimetres – and sometimes it needs magic. Ken Ishiwata, the late guru of Marantz sound, was one such wizard. He would famously demonstrate the latest audio kit – be it a Compact Disc and amp combo or high-end turntable – with baffling amounts of toe-in.

I attended many of his listening sessions, which often involved speakers that looked like they were having a face-off! Invariably, it would all sound sensational – as if the whole orchestra was hanging in mid-air, although I could never replicate the same trick at home.

The classic rule of thumb for a sweet spot is an equilateral triangle. You should aim to sit exactly between your two loudspeakers at a distance that’s a little greater than that between the two enclosures. This helps the soundstage stay coherent, with neither speaker dominating. One useful tool when it comes to pinpointing the classic stereo sweet spot is a laser pointer.

Create a target in the main listening position and align the pointer with each primary driver, so that it scores a hit. You’ll want to experiment, painstakingly moving your stereo speakers farther apart, noting the impact this has on your listening experience. Play the same track repeatedly; something with a strong vocal performance would be ideal, maybe enlist Diana Krall or Carole King for the exercise.

You don’t need to end up with an absolutely equilateral triangle, but it’s a great starting point in your speaker positioning process. You’ll soon hear when the sweet spot for your room is right.

Remember, those sitting to one side or the other of the triangle may experience a constricted image. Of course, not all loudspeakers are designed to benefit from a toe-in. Some manufacturers sell models with wide-dispersion tweeters or waveguides, voiced to fire straight ahead. Their aim is to create a broad, democratic spread of sound. They’re not about surgical precision. Sometimes, the best angle is none at all – but the ultimate arbiter is your own ears.

Bass Place

Your loudspeaker's relationship with your room is crucial, and varies a lot between types of speakers. Generally, they don’t like being too close to rear walls, where they will inevitably boom, which weighs the sound down and sucks the life out of it.

So you should always put some distance between the rear of the speaker and your room’s rear wall – but how much is a matter of experimentation, as it’s so dependent both on the way the speaker is designed and also the peculiarities of your listening room.

The closer the speaker is to your rear wall, the more bass you’ll get, and conversely, there’s less bottom end when you move the speakers out into the room. The trick is to optimise the bass reinforcement – sometimes called room gain – productively, but don’t overdo it.

Generally, larger – often floorstanding – speakers need to go further out into the room to avoid bass boom, while smaller standmounters can sit fairly close to rear walls. This is complicated somewhat depending on whether the speaker is a closed-box ‘infinite baffle’ design, or has an open bass port.

Generally, the former can be positioned a lot closer to a rear wall – sometimes just 10cm or so – as they interact far less with the room. The latter, especially when they have a rear-pointing bass port, usually need between 50cm and a metre of open space behind them.

Don’t forget, though, that some manufacturers actually bank on bass reinforcement to boost their product’s low end, making it sound bigger than it really is. This is especially the case with smaller ported standmount designs.

Of course, some degree of compromise is inevitable, unless you’re lucky enough to have a dedicated listening room. But if you can master room resonances, then whatever type of speaker you have, you’ll suffer less from bass boom and enjoy greater clarity and speed.

Material World

Houses differ in their construction and layout at least as much as loudspeakers, but there are various ways to compensate for this. For example, hard, bare listening room walls throw sound back at you; too much glass or plaster will emphasise the upper midband and treble, and add unwanted sound wave reflections.

A room full of thick curtains and deep-pile carpet, on the other hand, can be overly absorptive and suck the life out of the music. Sound bounces off walls, ceilings, and floors, arriving fractions of a second after the direct sound from your speakers. This can smear the stereo image and dull clarity. Rugs, bookshelves, and sofas – everyday objects that act like acoustic bumpers – are your friend here, as they break up and/or absorb echoes.

Then there are standing waves, the bane of bass lovers. These occur when low frequencies hit the room’s boundaries and start reinforcing or cancelling each other, depending on where you’re sitting. That’s why in one spot the bass may hit deep, while an armchair away it almost disappears.

Fixes don’t have to involve expensive treatment panels – although these really do help if you’re serious. Sometimes, a well-placed bookshelf, a couple of scatter cushions, or even moving a chair around can be advantageous.

Subwoofer placement (if you have one) is also surprisingly influential. Experiment with positions until the bass sounds smoothest and least obvious. Of course, we’re not trying to emulate an anechoic chamber here, so some level of room interaction is essential for good sound. Again, use your ears to get the balance right.

Listening height is also important. In an ideal world, your ears should be about level with the tweeters of your loudspeaker. This can be a problem in the real world. Typically, you’ll not be in the same place for everything you play. Roughly aim to have tweeters at around ear level when you’re seated in your preferred listening spot.

Floorstanders intrinsically get this right, although standmounting speakers or monitors are at the mercy of the stands they’re perched on. Maybe consider 16-inch-tall stands, instead of the more usual 20 or 24-inchers?

If your room really doesn’t lend itself to basic speaker placement methodology, then there are other solutions. Meridian’s flagship DSP9 loudspeaker boasts some clever tech, called Image Focus Plus, which allows you to steer the central image (or vocal) left or right, as well as alter its perceived height.

Alternatively, wide-dispersion speakers could be the way to go. Modern room correction systems like Dirac are highly effective these days, but remember that digital signal processing is like a sticking plaster, and it’s better to cure your room problems at the source rather than trying to fix them with clever tech later.

Totally Surrounded

Multichannel speaker placement is a very different kettle of fish from stereo, not least because so many more boxes are in play. At the same time, the main left and right channels should adhere to typical speaker rules; the centre, rear surrounds, and heights offer far more leeway. Compromise is the name of the game.

The centre channel speaker can be particularly difficult to place. Ideally, it should face you square on, but that’s where your TV is going to be. Below the set may be an option, but it could be difficult if that’s where your AV equipment is also racked.

My preference is to locate the centre speaker above the screen. This is actually easier if you’re wall-mounting your front array. Other options are to ditch the centre altogether and use a Phantom Centre, which can work surprisingly well. Or, if you’re a Sony Bravia TV owner, you can always deputise the TV speakers to work as a centre channel, using Acoustic Centre Sync.

Placing surround channels in a home cinema is another special case. They can be located on the rear side, or behind the listening position (or both), raised above ear level, so effects wash over.

If your surround setup is primarily used for gaming, I’d suggest placing your rears higher than if you’re building a cinema setup. I tend to find that works better for the more directional rear channel audio that you’ll get from a game engine.

The Verdict

It’s hard to understate just how important correct loudspeaker placement is to the sound of a hi-fi system. Certainly, the way speakers interact with rooms is underplayed, as we obsess over shiny new hi-fi and AV products.

Without doubt, finding the right spot for your speakers will make a huge difference to the quality of your system's bass articulation, midrange detail, treble openness and stereo imaging. The good news is that optimising your speaker placement costs nothing and should only take an hour or so. It’s also a lot of fun, especially when you consider the results!

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