Get Better Sound (Without Spending A Fortune)

After I got home from the audio show on Saturday night, I spent about 3 more hours measuring, moving, and toeing in the speakers. I think I finally have it exactly how it ought to be.

Wgscott would you swat that stinkin' fly or whatever it is that is buzzing during my lovely Tord Gustavsen and driving me nuts. <br />

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Tip #311 fly swatter at hand.<br />

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Great book, even without Tip #311. And the newsletters are chock full of good newer stuff.<br />

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-Chris

I opted for the $50 paperback/DVD combo. Can't wait to implement some of the tweaks.<br />

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Bill<br />

<i>swat that stinkin' fly or whatever it is that is buzzing during my lovely Tord Gustavsen and driving me nuts.</i><br />

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Either that is expectation bias or a ground loop. The fly is silent. <br />

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Always happy to drive.

My drosophyllum starts drooling whenever your little droso appears on screen. I'd love to oblige his appetite but have not been able to, so far. So to please my droso, it's back to Buzzin' fly (Tim Buckley).<br />

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-Chris

Yes sir, that thing is terrific!<br />

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A bit of trig or a good drawing program allows you to use the laser pointer to SUPER ACCURATELY set toe-in and position by pointing to calculated back and side wall markings when pointing inward and outward across the face of the speaker, AND measuring distance to side and rear walls.<br />

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After the speakers are aligned, leveling and getting them firmly seated can change the alignment, so you need to "sneak up" on perfection a little bit at the time.<br />

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Don't figure in height of the laser from the bottom of the tool!<br />

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The best "Audio Arithmetic" I've found that's compatible with my room and wife, was from Nordost:<br />

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http://www.nordost.com/Downloads/Speaker%20Placement.pdf<br />

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Cardas says this about "perfect" rooms and setups:<br />

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http://www.cardas.com/pdf/roomsetup.pdf<br />

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You need a BIG room if you want your speakers as wide as I do, someday I hope to build the "perfect" room. :-)<br />

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In my room, with my speakers, 22.5° toe-in is working pretty well, but experimenting at 26.25° is scheduled for this weekend to fill in the center a *little* bit better. :-)<br />

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The great thing about doing this scientifically is that I can do it alone, at night, when I feel like it. Once I get it "nearly perfect" I'll have a friend come in and we'll do final tweaking "by ear." :-)<br />

Your task is to bring the cursor to the guy's nose:<br />

http://www.selfcontrolfreak.com/slaan.html

I went through the same thing. It is amazing how interdependent things are in three dimensions. I finally toed them in such that the plane containing the front of each speaker is exactly perpendicular to the line that goes from the sweet-spot seat to the tweeter. But now I am wondering if that is excessive, especially since I have them placed flanking a fireplace that essentially makes a 45° angle with the wall. What that means, in effect, is that the side walls go out. So now I wonder whether it would be better to have the plane of the speaker parallel with the 45° wall, instead of aiming at the sweet-spot. The idea is maybe it will "fill the room" better? I suppose I should just do the experiment, but having spent several hours getting them exactly positioned makes me reluctant to make a huge change. (NO, i didn't leave the grid in place, but even with the grid, I found there was still a considerable amount of fine-tuning to do.)<br />

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Maybe I should put them on laser tables with micro-vernier adjusters.

That's pretty funny John. Did you create that? <br />

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If you did, speaking of having too much time on your hands.<br />

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-Chris

Hehe, I like it! :-)<br />

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You said "I finally toed them in such that the plane containing the front of each speaker is exactly perpendicular to the line that goes from the sweet-spot seat to the tweeter."<br />

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I'd refer to that as 30° toe-in, and that's where I originally had them.<br />

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I noticed that while it was way better than previously, there was a bit of left-center-right aspect to the sound, rather than completely filling in between them.<br />

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Toeing them out 7.5° (to 22.5 final) improved it substantially, but now the center itself is a tiny bit weak, so I'm going to split the difference back toward 30° this weekend. :-)<br />

I've gotten good results so far following Floyd Toole and Sean Olive's AES white papers on the subject so I'm curious to see how Jim's theories match up.<br />

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I'm hoping there's some talk about near-field setups as that's my only option in such a small room.<br />

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Bill

When you say small room, how small is it? I consider my room pretty small (approx 12'x15'x10') and not ideal in terms of how much stuff is in it and yet I followed much of his setup advice (fairly closely but slightly modified for my room) and came out with very good and very much improved sound. <br />

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I payed particular attention to playing with small changes after having set the speakers up to general recommendations. I also went the stereo sub woofer route. If you're not using sub(s) the small final changes will probably be even more important.<br />

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-Chris

It's only 10'x11'x9' and was meant to be an office. So far I've gotten pretty decent results. The big thing missing is acoustic treatments.<br />

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Bill

The hard part is going to be getting you and the speakers away from the walls without putting you all in the same spot.<br />

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Are you planning to use the room just as a listening room, or do you need to use it for other things? And is there a lot of stuff in it (relatively speaking of course)?<br />

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If you've already mentioned all this stuff, sorry, just direct me to the post, I can't check while writing.<br />

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Let's see, at a very minimum you would want the speakers and yourself two feet from all walls (there's your first compromise I think). So if you put the speakers across the 10 ft wall that would leave 6' between speakers, and 7'+ between you and speakers. So the other way would probably be better because you'll probably want all the width you can get between speakers. Your relative distance from them should work out fine, if you can place yourself wherever you want.<br />

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As to real near field stuff, I don't think Jim Smith goes into that, if I remember correctly. <br />

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-Chris

I got Jim's book and dvd's last week and today I bought a laser measuring device that was on sale at a local hardware store (Canadian Tire). Unfortunately, it only seems to work properly if it's pointed at a large wall and held perpendicular to the wall. I tried pointing it at my speakers or at my listening chair and can't get an accurate reading, usually I get an error. In the video Jim points the Bosch device at a very small white foot on a tripod at the centre point between the speakers, so I assume it's still very accurate when pointed at small objects. Is this correct and how important is it to hold the Bosch perpendicular to the object it's pointed at? <br />

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If anyone knows where to buy one in Canada, please let me know as well.<br />

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Thanks,<br />

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Andrew

There are two types of laser measurement devices. One has a laser beam that points to where you're aiming but the distance is measured with an ultrasonic wave. This is what you probably purchased (usually around $30-50) and it's why you need a large surface and can't aim just at the tweeter. Your best solution is to tape a large piece of paper over the tweeter and do the measurements that way.<br />

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I did purchase a proper Ryobi laser distance measurement device at Home Depot Canada a few months back for $160 which actually uses the laser to measure the distance. I went back onto the website just now and they are no longer available. I looked at Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Rona back then and Home Depot was the only local store to have it.<br />

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Good luck with your search.

Andrew,<br />

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I bought mine at a local Lowe's Hardware store - a chain here in the US.<br />

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Home Depot stores had them as well.<br />

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I've not found a perpendicular surface necessary, but you'll get different measurements unless you can hit the same point each time.<br />

Thanks for the replies. I saw the Ryobi one at Home Depot and it was $199, which was more than I wanted to spend. I just called my local Lowes and they have the Bosch for $178, which is crazy since homedepot.com has it for $99 and amazon.com is $86.88. Typical Canadian ripoff prices!

Ryobi tools are junk, save your money.

Lowes.com also has it for $99, so I called the store again to see if they'd match or at least get close to their own company's prices, but they said no and gave me the typical line about "taxes and tariffs". I might be able to justify spending $100 on something like this, but $200 is just too much.

and room characteristics such as sealed box, ported enclosure, open baffle, horns, ribbon and planar magnetic and electrostatic speakers?<br />

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I can almost swear that the placement of some speakers are very crucial for getting that magical sound. In the right position these speakers sound good or great but in the wrong position these same speakers sound lousy. I can't tell you how many listening rooms I just had to leave because the music just sounded bad.<br />

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I can also swear that some other speakers often sound enchanting regardless of placement. For instance I heard the Quad ESL-57s in many different arrangements but I never heard one that I didn't enjoy and finding one that I couldn't stand just doesn't seem possible.<br />

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Is there any grounds for my beliefs or is it just my musical tastes in speakers?<br />

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The '57s do not play very loud, nor do they have a lot of bass. Both may lead to them being easier to place than some others. <br />

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It also doesn't hurt that they have the best mids ever...

I saw the Ryobi one at Home Depot and it was $199, which was more than I wanted to spend.<br />

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There's no reason to get a laser device unless you're thinking of doing this kind of setup a lot--like for a living. It's not like it's more accurate (or needs to be) than a good tape measure given the situation. two ears and the likelihood that you'll be moving your head at least a bit make the exact sweet spot hard to determine and thus measure perfectly. Besides, an important part of the setup is the final tweaking of speaker placement, so being off by an inch or two initially is close to irrelevant.<br />

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-Chris

The time saved resolving smaller distances by ear can be saved with the $99 Bosch.<br />

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With the money that most folks have spent on their systems, this seems a relatively small expense to help take the system to another level.<br />

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And AFAIK, it always does.<br />

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My 2 cents...

"There's no reason to get a laser device unless you're thinking of doing this kind of setup a lot-"<br />

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Oh come on, using this thing is probably the most fun I have had recently with my clothes on.