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A speaker placement tip that speaker manuals get wrong (2017)

163 points by ZeljkoS 6y ago

RedShift1 6y ago
TLDR: Don't put your speakers between 1 and 4 m from your wall, orient your speakers to be directed at your ears.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tiniuclx 6y ago
  There's a bit more to it that's been hinted at in this article. Briefly put, you don't want to be in the nodes of your room, the points where low frequencies bouncing off the walls cancel themselves out. For instance, no matter where you put the speakers, if they're in a cubical room [0] and your ears are in the centre of it, you'll hear very little bass. [0] Here's a simulation of where the modes of such a room might be: https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=300&w=300&h=300&r60=0.6 https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=300&w=300&h=300&r60=0.6
tiniuclx 6y ago
This is a really important article if you want to get the most out of your speakers or studio monitors. When I was working on my home studio, I found that the position of the monitors had a huge impact on how they sounded. It took a good few days of moving the monitors & measuring the response, but I believe I was able to find a position that is usable & makes up for some of the deficiencies of my room.
- bartread 6y ago
  Same goes for hifi to be honest. I didn't spend that long fiddling with speaker position, because I just don't have that many degrees of freedom in my living room without rearranging the whole room around the speakers[0], but after two or three hours spread over a couple of days or so I did get to what I think is the best compromise in terms of sound quality vs. the speakers being in the way. A few weeks later I added a subwoofer into the setup and, again, probably spent another 3 or 4 hours spread over several days fiddling and listening to get that to sound the best I could at my typical listening volumes (what I wanted was to support the low end without overwhelming it). I haven't even got to the room that I use as an office/studio, which is a small spare bedroom. The room works well as an office now that I've redecorated it and put in new floor and shelves, but I need to finish off power routing and suchlike before I start on speaker placement. [0] Many serious audiophiles would argue that you should do just this for the best results but I don't have the space and I want a room that's usable for things other than just listening to music. I often think this is one of those situations where the perfect really can end up as the enemy of the good.
  - archi42 6y ago
    Haha, I think your [0] is pretty much the common case for most who care for good sound. I had that setup once (35m² dorm room with a bed, a couch+small table, cloths rack and a desk - and two 1,40m/4.5ft speakers in the middle of the room). Yes: There is a VERY good point to arranging the room around the speakers. But that's difficult to explain to an SO who doesn't care for good sound and/or who prefers a more multi-functional living room. If you're listening alone, and don't care for a small sweet spot: In our study room I'm VERY happy using a DIY FAST/WAW system with a large full range speaker. The 4" FR (Tangband W4-2142) has some heavy beaming at higher frequencies. The sweet spot is rather small (I put it in front of my main display) - but reflections are a non-issue. The result is a very good sound stage. I implemented the cross over into a DSP (Beocreate Amp) and have one channel for each of the two drivers per side. But the only "real" correction I apply is at the low end (less room modes & extension to 40Hz at expense of ~9dB less SPL_max. Pretty nice for 4l encased volume and two 4" drivers).
lmilcin 6y ago
Umm... it kinda seems the author actually got it wrong. Obviously, any information directed at people with no knowledge in area is simplified and possibly also intentionally incorrect. The simple articles on the internet and brochures assume you are stupid and you need safe way to set up your speakers. So that's why they ask you to place them far from wall. It would be stupid to try to explain physics of wave propagation and interference to people who need to read a leaflet to be able to set up their speakers. But if you have bit more knowledge it is not difficult to control your situation while also having speakers closer to the wall. Sound is distorted when you receive multiple waves that are out of phase and especially, as it usually happens, when different wavelengths are received at different phases (some in phase, some completely out of phase). While it is not possible to remove all reflections in a closed room (and some reflection is actually welcome because we want to feel being in a room rather than void) it is possible to make sure that the ratio of the wave from the speaker to the one from reflections is high enough that we do not perceive them as distortions. When a speaker is placed close to a wall, any energy radiated from the back of the speaker is reflected. There is also some energy from the front of the speaker, but because of the speaker itself only little of it reaches the wall behind and by the time it is reflected in the direction of the listener there is just not enough energy to be perceived as distortion. It is important that a lot of this is due to relative distances of sound sources (or reflections). If you sit 1m from the speaker that is 50cm from the wall, the sound from the speaker travels 1m but the reflection travels 2m to reach you. This means the reflection is attenuated by 6dB by distance alone (assuming omnidirectional emission from the speaker and that it is perfectly reflected from the wall). When a speaker is emitting very close to the wall and uses back port to emit bass, that back port is very close to the wall and not only gets distorted (due to being closer to the wall than wave length) but also reflected with a power very close to the original wave but out of phase, depending on frequency. That's what gives horrible result. Back ported speakers sound better because they elliminate sound of moving air, but they have disadvantage in placement close to walls. Just use front ported speakers when placing close to wall (see bookshelf speakers) which are designed exactly for that use case. More tips: - don't place speakers close to the wall if you are going to sit far from them, because this causes relative ratios to be close - it is ok to place front ported speakers close to the wall if you are going to sit close to them (for on your desk) - don't just focus on what's in front of you, if there is a wall behind you it is going to cause reflections that can cause powerful distortions if you are relatively close to it compared to the distance of speakers. - you can put something soft and permeable behind your speaker and behind your head to reduce high frequency distortions - you can play with some types of shapes around speakers and behind your head to reduce low frequency reflections distorting your sound. By having different parts of the reflection arrive at different times you reduce perceived effect of the distortion.
patrakov 6y ago
Well, the author could do more research. There are HiFi speakers that are designed to provide the correct frequency response when placed near a wall and sound wrong otherwise. "Klipschorn" would be an extreme example of this category. There are other speakers (actually the majority) that are not designed to be placed against a wall, but, if you use digital room correction features in your HiFi receiver, they still have to be placed against the wall, so that there is less work for the DSP to do. There are also so-called "electrostatic speakers" (e.g. "Quad ESL 2912") which absolutely must not be placed near the wall, because the rear wave is in counter-phase (unlike the traditional speakers), and will cancel the front wave exactly.
- tiniuclx 6y ago
  There are some problems that cannot be corrected through room correction EQ, namely the Speaker Boundary Interference Effect, which happens when the reflection from a wall is out-of-phase with the signal that you want to hear, and produces a deep valley in the frequency response. You could try boosting at the frequency that the valley is at, but that makes both the signal _and the reflection_ equally as loud. Therefore, they cancel out in almost the same manner for basically no net gain.
  - scns 6y ago
    Bingo, they are called room modes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_modes?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_modes?wprov=sfla1 Their influence can be be diminshed with absorbers, construction of a room without parallel walls or so big that they can't be heard (eg Concert halls)
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  >There are HiFi speakers that are designed to provide the correct frequency response when placed near a wall Another example may be the Ohm Walsh line of loudspeakers. I've only ever heard positive things about how close-to-life it sounds, and that's accomplished with the unique upward-facing driver and using walls and corners to an advantage.
- prox 6y ago
anotheryou 6y ago
I can recommend global EQs fixing your room in software. The most simple and imperfect route: get a global EQ for your OS and play around with a sine generator and notch filters. Fix the 1-2 frequencies where it's just way too loud. The fiddly and free route: https://www.roomeqwizard.com/ https://www.roomeqwizard.com/ (search for tutorials on that) and than for windows there is "Equalizer APO" to load it. Use the best mic you have, in a really bad room even an sm57 will do wonders. The more expensive and easy route: https://www.sonarworks.com/reference https://www.sonarworks.com/reference with a measuring mic (they are not that expensive). I think the worse your room and speakers are the more this helps (I lived an a square tube, now in a better shaped room the effect is much less noticeable). For me it really cleans up the otherwise muddy lows. I can recommend boosting them afterwards for a more hi-fi sound, really neutral doesn't have the punch you might be used to :). Disclaimer: this will be worse than the perfect physical setup. You can fix some things in software, but there will be losses and it and only fix one point in your room really well. It's also a hassle to change EQ settings when you change to headphones.
- analog31 6y ago
  Quite agreed. Granted, measuring and testing things are things that I enjoy, but I can't even imagine debating the behavior of something like a speaker without doing some basic measurements. Not necessarily to correct anything, but at least to find out what's going on.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kristo 6y ago
The main issue with speaker placement in a typical home recording studio is standing waves, and in this case placing speakers against the wall is going to amplify the problem, and no room EQ can fix it. Generally, you want your speakers to be a half wave length away from the wall for the first order standing wave in your space. This is so the wave output by the speaker will cancel with the wave resonating between your walls, which will help the issue quite a bit (though it's not perfect either). With something like the Klipschorn you're basically giving up on solving this issue with speaker placement and will have to resort to room modifications to ameliorate it. That said, you get a lot of benefits from the khorn also : )
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  There are different opinions regarding standing waves, at least regarding subwoofers. Some say they can actually be pleasant and beneficial, as they can boost perceived bass responses for smaller setups, depending on frequency and intensity.
  - kristo 6y ago
    Yea if you have one specific location where you listen to your music then you can certainly use the standing wave to your advantage, or even EQ the boosted response out at that frequency, but as soon as you move you will encounter problems. It's pretty remarkable to play a sine wave at the frequency of your room's standing wave and then just walk the length and hear it go from completely silent to very loud and back again. Makes you realize how much distortion this is actually causing
    - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
      Yes, thus the „subwoofer crawl“. I think in reality most people have 1-2 fixed locations in a room where they usually listen to music.
hudo 6y ago
First thing about most HIFI speakers is that they have to be at least 0.5m from the back wall. Otherwise you lose sound stage depth and get bloated bass. Its such a shame to see people giving 5-10k$ on pair of really good speakers and putting them 20-30cm from the wall (i see that ALL the time on various FB groups). I have mine floorstanders around 1.2m away, where they sound the best. Is always a compromise between room and speakers placement.
- bzzzt 6y ago
  Depends on the speakers I think. My floor standing speakers have front-firing woofers so putting them close to the wall doesn't matter that much for the sound.
hudo 6y ago
Please, please, please move your speakers away from the wall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UA-VctzuFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UA-VctzuFo
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  To anyone else enjoying this video, this man, Steve Guttenberg, is a high-profile audio tech reviewer, and his reviews, "complete system recommendations" and musings on hi-fi are excellent. For many people, reviewers of hi-fi gear is the closest they can get to having an idea of what they're buying now that brick-and-mortar stores with listening rooms are harder to reach. I'd also recommend The British Audiophile's take on speaker placement and distancing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHOYXjVJKKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHOYXjVJKKY
  - mrkeen 6y ago
    This is a good start if you want to get into (or avoid) Guttenberg's stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfMg5P0_vJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfMg5P0_vJk Listen to him wax sarcastically about blind tests. Does he not get it? Or does he make his living from not getting it?
    - claudiawerner 6y ago
      I don't like everything he says, and I'm sometimes disappointed to see him refer to people who think Ethernet cables make no difference above $20 as "cable deniers" (though analogue cables can make a difference, especially interconnects) - but I don't think he's being dishonest, I think he's misinformed, and there's more than his "whatever works for you" takes on engineering matters. At least in my experience.
omegote 6y ago
I was (and still am) in the same situation as the author two years ago. I bought a pair of JBL LSR 305 that I placed at each side of the screen, roughly 120cm away from each other and at arms length from me. They're about 30cm away from the back wall. The problem I have is with the bass. Standing in the normal position to interact with my PC, the bass strength is low. Now, the moment I move back about 1 meter, the bass strength becomes great (the one I'd expect from this pair of speakers). I really don't know what to do :/
- bombcar 6y ago
  Try moving one speaker back and forth - they may be angled such that the different phases are canceling bass right where you sit.
- grandinj 6y ago
  You're probably in a room null when in your "normal position to interact with the PC". Try moving them closer to the back wall. Or there are room treatments like adding some kind of absorption panel to the problematic wall(s).
- dsr_ 6y ago
  Take a look at the back of your LSR305. There's a switch marked LF Trim. (There's also a HF Trim.) It has three positions: cut, normal, and boost. It's a built in EQ designed for handling room boundaries. You'll need to set it on both speakers.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    This, plus you could place isolation pads underneath the speakers to prevent the low frequencies from causing resonance in the desk or other platform they're on if they aren't already. You can find some pretty cheap options these days that should do the trick.
- scns 6y ago
  You can't trick physics. There are notes so low (huge wavelength), you can only hear them, if you are several meters away.
MotherFunker 6y ago
I think many people don't realise is that 'ideally' (generous use of ideally) there is no front wall (the wall behind the speakers. This is why large recording studios have soffit mounted speakers, some experts actually encourage pushing the speakers closer to the wall to try and get as close as possible to approximate this. Obviously there is a lot more nuance in this - Always take measurements and use your ears too. As always, Hi-Fi and Studio set-ups/advice are not entirely inter-operable, and a lot of online chat can be both camps talking simultaneously which is difficult for a reader to parse.
- titzer 6y ago
  Did you read the article? This is its basic conclusion.
whiddershins 6y ago
This kind of down to earth advice with a medium amount of technical explanation is fantastic. One thing I would mention is that rigid fiberglass corner traps seemed to do a lot in my studio. Also if you are going to talk about room modes, you are also going to want to think about the permeability of your walls and whether they are going to even reflect the frequency in question and set up a mode. And also we may want to make a distinction between making a listening environment that sounds amazing, and one that has utility. It can be easy for an intermediate or beginner at mixing to get really tricked by a great listening environment in to doing things that won’t translate. On the other hand, life is short, and listening to a beautiful set up is just a better quality of life if nothing else.
- stinos 6y ago
  you are also going to want to think about the permeability of your walls If I understand things correctly, this was missing a bit from the whole (otherwise very good) explanation in the article: it constantly mentions 'walls' and each time I can't help but think that the difference between a solid concrete 30cm thick wall and a 10cm plasterboard plus some thermal insulation makes a difference in how it reflects lower frequencies. To the point that in the latter case there might be not much reflection at all and you actually have to start to measure from the wall (or whatever) in the next room?
  - cratermoon 6y ago
    What if you're practicing with your high school rock band in an old wooden barn with boards that have become rock-hard after losing most of its moisture?
    - multjoy 6y ago
      Doesn’t matter as you can’t hear anything over the snare anyway.
  - greedo 6y ago
    Wood studs, drywall and fiberglass insulation don't do much to attenuate low frequencies. Fiberglass does almost nothing. Mass is the one thing that absorbs sound the best.
S_A_P 6y ago
I’m always a bit flummoxed by guidelines like this being taken as gospel. Sure I will start with the manufacture recommended placement if my room allows, but at the end of the day I have to hear the speakers so if it sounds good it is good rules for me. There really is no wrong if you like what you hear. Sure a rear port placed an inch from the wall will alter the response and likely cause chuffing as the air rushes in and out, but that falls under common sense to some degree. I guess one of the core tenets of “hifi” used to be flat frequency response from 20hz-20khz and no added coloration from the reproduction system. That’s fine but often times today’s music sounds crappy under those parameters. People like hyped bass and treble with a scooped midrange. That’s okay. The parameters shift slightly when using studio monitoring to create a mix for music that needs to translate to other playback environments but even then a perfectly flat response is not necessary. If you know that your monitors are bass shy and increasing the bass will make it sound muddy on the majority of other systems then that is a data point you keep in mind. Learning the quirks of your monitoring setup is very important in this scenario. The point being that the guidelines are a starting point, not the rule.
- johnvanommen 6y ago
  According to the research done by Harman/Samsung, listeners generally prefer a curve that's gently sloping by one decibel per octave. IE, if you want a pleasing sound, a loudspeaker that's playing 90dB at 100Hz should be playing 83dB at 16,800Hz. And the response curve should be consistent from point A to point B. This recommendation can be impacted by the power response of the speaker, but that's another subject...
- munificent 6y ago
  > at the end of the day I have to hear the speakers so if it sounds good it is good rules for me. There really is no wrong if you like what you hear. There are two very different goals that are easy to conflate and that the article isn't very clear about: 1. If you are a music listener or music producer focusing on making music, you just want a room that sounds great to you. If you're making music, you want a sound that inspires you and gets the creative juices flowing. 2. If you are a mixing or mastering engineer or a music producer focusing on polishing and mixing your work, you want a room that gives you insight on how the audio will sound in a wide variety of listening environments. Your goal is to get the song sounding as good on as many people's speakers, headphones, and rooms as possible and your own personal setup is a proxy for that. For example, if you only have a couple of tiny speakers that don't go below 50 Hz, your song may have subbass that you literally cannot hear. But when someone with a subwoofer plays the song, all of that comes out. If it's too loud or out of tune, the song sounds like trash, but you have no way of knowing. So the goal is a monitor setup that is relatively neutral so that the song doesn't sound better to you than it will to others. You want a fairly flat response so that you aren't inadvertently EQ-ing the song to cancel out peaks and valleys in your room because then that will imbalance the sound in other rooms. And you want to cover the full frequency range so you can hear everything others will be able to hear. If the songs sounds great in your room, but it sounds like garbage for everyone not in your room, it definitely is not great. Most articles about monitor placement tend to assume the goal is 2 more than 1. These days, the line is blurry because many musicians and producers are also doing a lot of the mixing.
dqpb 6y ago
For anyone else who is unfamiliar with “monitor” in this context, found this on Wikipedia: > Among audio engineers, the term monitor implies that the speaker is designed to produce relatively flat (linear) phase and frequency responses. In other words, it exhibits minimal emphasis or de-emphasis of particular frequencies, the loudspeaker gives an accurate reproduction of the tonal qualities of the source audio ("uncolored" or "transparent" are synonyms), and there will be no relative phase shift of particular frequencies—meaning no distortion in sound-stage perspective for stereo recordings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_monitor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_monitor
johnvanommen 6y ago
This article is unnecessarily complex, and offers solutions that are (mostly) applicable to older speakers. Most modern studio monitors put the tweeter in a waveguide. By doing that, it accomplishes two things: * The loudspeaker frequency response is consistent, no matter whether you're standing directly in front of the speaker, or to the sides. IE, the placement of the loudspeaker is less important than with older designs. * Most importantly, a waveguide takes the energy radiated by the driver and it focuses it into a narrower beam than a conventional tweeter. By doing this, reflections off of the sidewalls, ceiling and floor are less of an issue. To make a long story short, modern studio monitors with a waveguide are less fussy about placement. Reflections off of the sidewalls, ceilings and floor can still cause issues with lower midrange and midbass response, but these issues can be fixed with EQ to a large extent. The reason that EQ is less effective at high frequencies is because the wavelengths are so short. For instance, 5khz is 6.8cm long. Because it's so short, equalizing that frequency for one point in the room can screw it up at ANOTHER point in the room. Low frequencies are much longer, and because they're longer, EQ is more effective. For instance, 500Hz is 68cm long. Because of this long length, if you EQ a speaker to flatten out a peak at 500Hz, that EQ will be effective over a broad range of positions in the room.
- moogleii 6y ago
  > This article is unnecessarily complex, and offers solutions that are (mostly) applicable to older speakers. Wait, isn't the conclusion of the article to not overly worry about placement and just use your ears as a guide? The build-up is just background info, which I actually appreciated.
- titzer 6y ago
  > Reflections off of the sidewalls, ceilings and floor can still cause issues with lower midrange and midbass response, but these issues can be fixed with EQ to a large extent. I don't really believe this. Ever put speakers in an empty, stone-walled, wood-floored room? No EQ in the world is going to fix that. You need acoustic treatment in some shape or form, unless your walls are made out of cotton.
  - 6y ago
chaz6 6y ago
The only thing that matters is what sounds best to you. You should place them where they sound best for your listening position. This is not a scientific process. It is a trial and error process.
- stinos 6y ago
  Well, yes, but what this article tries to do is hint to where you can start your trial to reduce the number of error to begin with.
hatsunearu 6y ago
The real answer is: unless you have an anechoic chamber, you wanna have an EQ to tune out the room effects. It's not as expensive as you might think too.
benlivengood 6y ago
For people who have put significant effort into setting up a room with good acoustics and speakers; is the sound quality significantly better than good headphones? I can understand the other reasons speakers are nice; being able to hear other things besides the audio playback, sharing the sound with other people at the same time, etc.
- aldanor 6y ago
  Depends on your definition of better. A lot of the time this will be done in a mixing room with studio monitors yielding as flat a response curve as possible (and without any room reverb). You will get a better sound in that it's precise, but it's not necessarily more pleasant to listen to. As for precision: it's easier to hear the panning / stage in good headphones just because it's so augmented. The low end - no matter how good the headphones are, you can't rely on them to mix it properly, you need good monitors. If you mix the low end on headphones, there's always a high probability that it will only sound good on this pair of headphones and not translate to other setups.
- lrem 6y ago
  I'm not a musician, but got recently a pair of Presonus Eris 3.5 monitors as my desk speakers. I find that more pleasant to use than headphones I have (AT BPHS1 and Bose QC35).
- hammock 6y ago
  Headphones artificially increase the size of the stereo soundstage, that is one reason why it is preferred to mix audio on speakers
waynesonfire 6y ago
this is the type of article that made me season my cast iron with flaxseed oil. some rando internet guy telling you things.
thisisbrians 6y ago
Having spent a bunch of time trying to figure this all out myself, as well, some practical tips (confirmed anecdotally by yours truly): - Place your speakers such that they form an equilateral triangle, with the tweeters pointing directly at your head while you are seated in the control position. Near-field monitors are made for focusing on a 'sweet spot' like this. Using purpose-built speaker stands is the easiest route here. - Treat the first reflection points with foam, or anything that absorbs/scatters sound (e.g. I hung a huge shag rug on the back wall) - Break up smooth surfaces (walls/floors/windows) with other absorptive/non-smooth decorations and materials. Rug on floor, couch at back of room, curtains, even a bookcase; all will help absorb and scatter sound. - A good rule of thumb is to spend as much money on 'treating' the room as the speakers themselves (even great speakers will sound like trash in a room with no treatment). - When using the speakers for mixing/mastering work, listen at a conversational volume. The lower the volume, the less the room matters (and the room matters a lot). - You will get far better sound from decent headphones (I have HD650s) than from all but the most pristinely designed/tuned monitor setups. Probably would cost well over $10k and a lot of knowhow to beat the headphones.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  I like the Tom Petty method—I'm interpreting here, and paraphrasing in my own format based on a longer discussion and probably mixing up some of this with other knowledge. Mix— headphones Master— monitors Test— Toyota Corolla (Petty, said something like "just about everybody's gonna be listening in a Toyota"—they'd literally print a tape and run it out to someone's car)
  - thisisbrians 6y ago
    I laughed at the Toyota test, because there's a ton of truth in there. Got to test the mix on bad speakers to see if it translates...humbling, but necessary for a good mix. I do test in my car (coincidentally, it is a Corolla) as well :)
    - 52-6F-62 6y ago
      Isn't that the reason NS10's became popular as monitors, too? "If you can make it sound good on a pair of NS10's it'll sound good everywhere" being the mode†. It's definitely sage advice! † edit: Looks like I fell victim to hearsay. It's just something I'd heard so many times for so many years I assumed it was true, and it may be partly, but here's a great write up on the subject—tangential to the main thread: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story
genericacct 6y ago
This assumes everybody's hearing is the same but i guess it isn't and it also changes with age..
muxator 6y ago
> You know those mono-to-stereo mixing tricks that you’re not “supposed” to do because of mono compatibility, but you end up doing all the time anyway? You know, like the one where you double the track, pan the two versions out and delay one side? Is there a name for this effect? I'd like to hear an example!
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  I can't help you with a name, but it's one of the tricks that YouTube guitarist/instructor Paul Davids details in this video [0] - doubling down on it. (Basically he double-mics his guitar, sending each of the mics hard to one side, then again delayed and attenuated hard to the other side as well. What you get from that is a pretty good simulation of opposite-wall reflection from a larger space.) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww-cH29IGeM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww-cH29IGeM
  - muxator 6y ago
    That video was really clear, thanks!
anodyne33 6y ago
This takes me back to working in a few (slowly going to way of the buffalo) "professional" or "big" studios. Both of the A studios I worked in had a big set of Genelecs in the bulkhead and two or three more mid and near field monitors just above or behind the console meter bridge. Each served it's own purpose and all the mixing guys I saw wound swap between them fairly regularly. In that situation it was about emulating different scenarios, from the 4" block speakers to get a feel for what someone would hear on an old car stereo to mid field Dynaudios that were more flat than hyped to get a feel for what the home audiophile might experience. That's not a practical approach for a small studio (either in size or budget) but having been out of that world for a long time it makes me wonder if someone would be better served with two or three pairs of reasonably priced pair of speakers rather than trying to perfect the sound of one pair that aren't going to reflect (no pun intended) other playback environments that aren't acoustically optimized.
- sjcoles 6y ago
  Hearing damage plays a role too I think. Aesop Rock is one that comes to mind where you can literally hear the hearing damage in the resulting mix. Late Zappa the same thing happened.
- thisisbrians 6y ago
  Astute. The goal isn't to get the mix sounding good on one particular listening system, but being able to hear the raw, unadulterated signal as well as possible with knowledge of how it will or won't translate in other environments. Always good to have multiple sets of speakers to test those assumptions out in real-time. Interestingly, even the geometry of your specific ears will color the resulting sound that is heard, which is why referencing to commercial tracks is so helpful in the process.
asdfjkhjhu33 6y ago
This article does not mention that scientific measurement with a calibrated measurement microphone can take all of the guesswork out of speaker placement, just like you need a calibrated color measurement puck (and associated color-management software) to guarantee accurate color on computer monitors and printers. A measurement microphone tells you if the 200Hz frequency is too loud or too quiet with respect to the 1000Hz frequency, and so on, just like color management tells you if red #FF0000 is oversaturated or undersaturated with respect to the sRGB or DCI-P3 or whatever color space you are targeting. I bought a UMIK-1 microphone, downloaded the factory .txt calibration file, and used the roomeqwizard.com software to tune my systems. Works great. Human audible sound travels in waves at frequencies in the 16Hz-20KHz range. Those waves bounce around the room and interact to make certain frequencies louder and others quieter ("standing waves"). This room response is especially important below 250-500Hz: search for "Schroeder Frequency" if curious.
- baq 6y ago
  denon's/marantz mid-range and above AVRs have audyssey which is allegedly quite good. any opinions on this solution compared to what you did?
  - iuweiru8787 6y ago
    I am the OP but I threw out my throw-away account. I don't use consumer AVRs; I use pro-audio equipment for producing the content consumed on consumer AVR equipment. I tried some of these fancy boxes that you upload EQ curves to for room correction (such as different MiniDSP-branded correction boxes which are very popular) but I've gotten measurably best results (with my measurement mic) using old-school 31-band graphic equalizers that have the 31 physical fader sliders you move up and down. These old-school analog devices have lower latency in milliseconds than the hi-tech DSP stuff which needs extra time to buffer and process the signal in ram. The fanciest digital correction available in those AVR type devices (such as Dirac brand correction) delays the entire signal by as much as 100+ milliseconds (making gaming and live instruments impossible because the audio lags so far behind the event that produced the audio, like how thunder lags behind a lightning flash). The theory is that because a 20Hz frequency has a 50ms cycle-time, you need to delay the audio signal at least 50ms across the entire 16Hz-20KHz spectrum to "see" what you are correcting down near 20Hz. However, multiple blind listening studies have shown that the human ear is not time-latency sensitive to the lowest base frequencies. These frequencies are "felt" more than heard and the brain lags with letting you "feel" the deep rumble. Old-school analog equalizers only delay the actual low-frequencies that correction is applied to (the frequencies you actually slide up or down on the physical slider/fader controls). So if you slide the 50Hz fader then only that frequency has its timing altered, and the brain can definitely hear the loudness correction at 50Hz when Godzilla roars or the earthquake in your movie happens but it can't hear the timing difference if you delay the 50Hz wave slightly in order to correct its loudness. So you gain loudness accuracy (which you can easily hear) at the expense of timing accuracy (which at low frequencies you can't hear). Also, I'm really picky about speaker hiss and a good 31-band analog EQ introduces less noise/hiss than more expensive digital EQ boxes I've tested. I put my measurement mic right up to the tweater and recorded the hiss that the digital box made and took a screenshot of the spectrogram, then compared with my analog EQs and my analog EQs were better, noticeably enough that I didn't even need the mic in order to hear the hiss difference. So my advice is to get a UMIK-1 measurement mic and a 31-band graphic EQ, then download roomeqwizard.com software and learn to use it. It involves walking around your room with the mic while playing constant test tones and watching a sound spectrogram graph on your computer screen. Even though the test tone is constant, when you walk around your room with the mic you can see and hear how the tone changes due to the standing wave phenomenon. It will open your eyes (and ears) to how the room you are in affects the sound coming out of speakers. And rather than reading articles on the web you can actually experience for yourself the scientific reality of how it works, just like in high school chemistry class you see what happens with your own eyes when you mix vinegar with baking soda, rather than just reading theory in a book. The actual physical experimental confirmation is crucial. Adjusting anything over 250-500Hz is a waste of time because if you shift your head (or measurement mic) just a foot or two you get a completely different frequency response. When you test this yourself you won't need to take my word for it or read web articles shilling snake oil audio products. Your eyes and ears and calibrated measurement mic will confirm the scientific reality for you. As to other equipment... at the affordable lower end you want a USB or Thunderbolt interface with balanced XLR connectors connected either directly to studio monitors or to an equipment rack with the amps, crossovers, equalizers, etc needed to power big passive subwoofers. The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (~$160 on Amazon) is a best seller USB audio interface and crystal clear. I'm listening through one right now and I love it. Be aware that if using a Mac with a T2 security chip (2016 and newer Macs) you need to use an external thunderbolt USB hub because T2 occasionally cuts out the internal USB; scroll down this article if curious: https://tidbits.com/2019/04/05/what-does-the-t2-chip-mean-for-mac-usage/ https://tidbits.com/2019/04/05/what-does-the-t2-chip-mean-fo... Here is a screenshot from the article of the T2 hiccup actually being recorded: you can see the audio waveform briefly cut out: https://tidbits.com/uploads/2019/04/T2-hiccup.jpg https://tidbits.com/uploads/2019/04/T2-hiccup.jpg None of Apple's "fixes" fixed the problem. This was the last straw for me and many other audio guys so now we use both Ubuntu and Windows 10 with WSL instead of the Mac. Most photos of $1M+ recording studios I see nowaways have Windows 10 desktops. If you don't want Win10 telemetry spying on you you need to set up a pi-hole or external firewall box, but M1 Macs and all iOS devices report your location and other telemetry to Apple now so you also need an external firewall for Apple now too, but I'm digressing from audio.... Back to audio, the UMIK-1 USB measurement mic is usually ~$99 new on Amazon/eBay/wherever. The roomeqwizard.com is free (as in gratis, not open source) Java software that can use the mic. For studio monitors, Yamaha and Adam Audio are both good and affordable. Many like the JBLs as long as you aren't too picky about hiss. Genelec is the very best and provably so by independent scientific measurement (see audiosciencereview.com measurements). But Genelec is stupid expensive, over $1k for a pair of their budget monitors. Anyway, this post is long enough and turning into an article. To summarize, get a Scarlett USB interface (~$160), the UMIK-1 ($99), a good pair of 5" or 7" studio monitors (Yamaha, Adam Audio, or maybe JBL, $300-$600 for the pair), and a graphic EQ. The bargain-basement Rockville REQ231 for ~$130 is essentially a cheap but good clone of a more expensive EQ. You can also spend $250-$400+ for Behringer or dbx/JBL which looks prettier in the rack but honestly doesn't sound any different.
rapjr9 6y ago
If you use a 31 band EQ on the sound going to the monitors isn't that going to alter the phase in each frequency band? So what you hear will have a different phase response than what is being recorded. Maybe an FIR EQ would be better? I believe that's why the mini-DSP boxes are popular, you can EQ without introducing phase changes.
teknico 6y ago
This made me laugh: "(And what does “behave” even mean? It’s not like we are talking about children here.)" Are they serious? :-D

163 points by ZeljkoS 6y ago

RedShift1 6y ago

TLDR: Don't put your speakers between 1 and 4 m from your wall, orient your speakers to be directed at your ears.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tiniuclx 6y ago
There's a bit more to it that's been hinted at in this article. Briefly put, you don't want to be in the nodes of your room, the points where low frequencies bouncing off the walls cancel themselves out. For instance, no matter where you put the speakers, if they're in a cubical room [0] and your ears are in the centre of it, you'll hear very little bass. [0] Here's a simulation of where the modes of such a room might be: https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=300&w=300&h=300&r60=0.6 https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=300&w=300&h=300&r60=0.6

tiniuclx 6y ago

This is a really important article if you want to get the most out of your speakers or studio monitors. When I was working on my home studio, I found that the position of the monitors had a huge impact on how they sounded. It took a good few days of moving the monitors & measuring the response, but I believe I was able to find a position that is usable & makes up for some of the deficiencies of my room.

bartread 6y ago
Same goes for hifi to be honest. I didn't spend that long fiddling with speaker position, because I just don't have that many degrees of freedom in my living room without rearranging the whole room around the speakers[0], but after two or three hours spread over a couple of days or so I did get to what I think is the best compromise in terms of sound quality vs. the speakers being in the way. A few weeks later I added a subwoofer into the setup and, again, probably spent another 3 or 4 hours spread over several days fiddling and listening to get that to sound the best I could at my typical listening volumes (what I wanted was to support the low end without overwhelming it). I haven't even got to the room that I use as an office/studio, which is a small spare bedroom. The room works well as an office now that I've redecorated it and put in new floor and shelves, but I need to finish off power routing and suchlike before I start on speaker placement. [0] Many serious audiophiles would argue that you should do just this for the best results but I don't have the space and I want a room that's usable for things other than just listening to music. I often think this is one of those situations where the perfect really can end up as the enemy of the good.
- archi42 6y ago
  Haha, I think your [0] is pretty much the common case for most who care for good sound. I had that setup once (35m² dorm room with a bed, a couch+small table, cloths rack and a desk - and two 1,40m/4.5ft speakers in the middle of the room). Yes: There is a VERY good point to arranging the room around the speakers. But that's difficult to explain to an SO who doesn't care for good sound and/or who prefers a more multi-functional living room. If you're listening alone, and don't care for a small sweet spot: In our study room I'm VERY happy using a DIY FAST/WAW system with a large full range speaker. The 4" FR (Tangband W4-2142) has some heavy beaming at higher frequencies. The sweet spot is rather small (I put it in front of my main display) - but reflections are a non-issue. The result is a very good sound stage. I implemented the cross over into a DSP (Beocreate Amp) and have one channel for each of the two drivers per side. But the only "real" correction I apply is at the low end (less room modes & extension to 40Hz at expense of ~9dB less SPL_max. Pretty nice for 4l encased volume and two 4" drivers).

lmilcin 6y ago

Umm... it kinda seems the author actually got it wrong. Obviously, any information directed at people with no knowledge in area is simplified and possibly also intentionally incorrect. The simple articles on the internet and brochures assume you are stupid and you need safe way to set up your speakers. So that's why they ask you to place them far from wall. It would be stupid to try to explain physics of wave propagation and interference to people who need to read a leaflet to be able to set up their speakers. But if you have bit more knowledge it is not difficult to control your situation while also having speakers closer to the wall. Sound is distorted when you receive multiple waves that are out of phase and especially, as it usually happens, when different wavelengths are received at different phases (some in phase, some completely out of phase). While it is not possible to remove all reflections in a closed room (and some reflection is actually welcome because we want to feel being in a room rather than void) it is possible to make sure that the ratio of the wave from the speaker to the one from reflections is high enough that we do not perceive them as distortions. When a speaker is placed close to a wall, any energy radiated from the back of the speaker is reflected. There is also some energy from the front of the speaker, but because of the speaker itself only little of it reaches the wall behind and by the time it is reflected in the direction of the listener there is just not enough energy to be perceived as distortion. It is important that a lot of this is due to relative distances of sound sources (or reflections). If you sit 1m from the speaker that is 50cm from the wall, the sound from the speaker travels 1m but the reflection travels 2m to reach you. This means the reflection is attenuated by 6dB by distance alone (assuming omnidirectional emission from the speaker and that it is perfectly reflected from the wall). When a speaker is emitting very close to the wall and uses back port to emit bass, that back port is very close to the wall and not only gets distorted (due to being closer to the wall than wave length) but also reflected with a power very close to the original wave but out of phase, depending on frequency. That's what gives horrible result. Back ported speakers sound better because they elliminate sound of moving air, but they have disadvantage in placement close to walls. Just use front ported speakers when placing close to wall (see bookshelf speakers) which are designed exactly for that use case. More tips: - don't place speakers close to the wall if you are going to sit far from them, because this causes relative ratios to be close - it is ok to place front ported speakers close to the wall if you are going to sit close to them (for on your desk) - don't just focus on what's in front of you, if there is a wall behind you it is going to cause reflections that can cause powerful distortions if you are relatively close to it compared to the distance of speakers. - you can put something soft and permeable behind your speaker and behind your head to reduce high frequency distortions - you can play with some types of shapes around speakers and behind your head to reduce low frequency reflections distorting your sound. By having different parts of the reflection arrive at different times you reduce perceived effect of the distortion.

patrakov 6y ago

Well, the author could do more research. There are HiFi speakers that are designed to provide the correct frequency response when placed near a wall and sound wrong otherwise. "Klipschorn" would be an extreme example of this category. There are other speakers (actually the majority) that are not designed to be placed against a wall, but, if you use digital room correction features in your HiFi receiver, they still have to be placed against the wall, so that there is less work for the DSP to do. There are also so-called "electrostatic speakers" (e.g. "Quad ESL 2912") which absolutely must not be placed near the wall, because the rear wave is in counter-phase (unlike the traditional speakers), and will cancel the front wave exactly.

tiniuclx 6y ago
There are some problems that cannot be corrected through room correction EQ, namely the Speaker Boundary Interference Effect, which happens when the reflection from a wall is out-of-phase with the signal that you want to hear, and produces a deep valley in the frequency response. You could try boosting at the frequency that the valley is at, but that makes both the signal _and the reflection_ equally as loud. Therefore, they cancel out in almost the same manner for basically no net gain.
- scns 6y ago
  Bingo, they are called room modes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_modes?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_modes?wprov=sfla1 Their influence can be be diminshed with absorbers, construction of a room without parallel walls or so big that they can't be heard (eg Concert halls)
claudiawerner 6y ago
>There are HiFi speakers that are designed to provide the correct frequency response when placed near a wall Another example may be the Ohm Walsh line of loudspeakers. I've only ever heard positive things about how close-to-life it sounds, and that's accomplished with the unique upward-facing driver and using walls and corners to an advantage.
prox 6y ago

anotheryou 6y ago

I can recommend global EQs fixing your room in software. The most simple and imperfect route: get a global EQ for your OS and play around with a sine generator and notch filters. Fix the 1-2 frequencies where it's just way too loud. The fiddly and free route: https://www.roomeqwizard.com/ https://www.roomeqwizard.com/ (search for tutorials on that) and than for windows there is "Equalizer APO" to load it. Use the best mic you have, in a really bad room even an sm57 will do wonders. The more expensive and easy route: https://www.sonarworks.com/reference https://www.sonarworks.com/reference with a measuring mic (they are not that expensive). I think the worse your room and speakers are the more this helps (I lived an a square tube, now in a better shaped room the effect is much less noticeable). For me it really cleans up the otherwise muddy lows. I can recommend boosting them afterwards for a more hi-fi sound, really neutral doesn't have the punch you might be used to :). Disclaimer: this will be worse than the perfect physical setup. You can fix some things in software, but there will be losses and it and only fix one point in your room really well. It's also a hassle to change EQ settings when you change to headphones.

analog31 6y ago
Quite agreed. Granted, measuring and testing things are things that I enjoy, but I can't even imagine debating the behavior of something like a speaker without doing some basic measurements. Not necessarily to correct anything, but at least to find out what's going on.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kristo 6y ago

The main issue with speaker placement in a typical home recording studio is standing waves, and in this case placing speakers against the wall is going to amplify the problem, and no room EQ can fix it. Generally, you want your speakers to be a half wave length away from the wall for the first order standing wave in your space. This is so the wave output by the speaker will cancel with the wave resonating between your walls, which will help the issue quite a bit (though it's not perfect either). With something like the Klipschorn you're basically giving up on solving this issue with speaker placement and will have to resort to room modifications to ameliorate it. That said, you get a lot of benefits from the khorn also : )

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
There are different opinions regarding standing waves, at least regarding subwoofers. Some say they can actually be pleasant and beneficial, as they can boost perceived bass responses for smaller setups, depending on frequency and intensity.
- kristo 6y ago
  Yea if you have one specific location where you listen to your music then you can certainly use the standing wave to your advantage, or even EQ the boosted response out at that frequency, but as soon as you move you will encounter problems. It's pretty remarkable to play a sine wave at the frequency of your room's standing wave and then just walk the length and hear it go from completely silent to very loud and back again. Makes you realize how much distortion this is actually causing
  - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
    Yes, thus the „subwoofer crawl“. I think in reality most people have 1-2 fixed locations in a room where they usually listen to music.

hudo 6y ago

First thing about most HIFI speakers is that they have to be at least 0.5m from the back wall. Otherwise you lose sound stage depth and get bloated bass. Its such a shame to see people giving 5-10k$ on pair of really good speakers and putting them 20-30cm from the wall (i see that ALL the time on various FB groups). I have mine floorstanders around 1.2m away, where they sound the best. Is always a compromise between room and speakers placement.

bzzzt 6y ago
Depends on the speakers I think. My floor standing speakers have front-firing woofers so putting them close to the wall doesn't matter that much for the sound.

hudo 6y ago

Please, please, please move your speakers away from the wall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UA-VctzuFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UA-VctzuFo

claudiawerner 6y ago
To anyone else enjoying this video, this man, Steve Guttenberg, is a high-profile audio tech reviewer, and his reviews, "complete system recommendations" and musings on hi-fi are excellent. For many people, reviewers of hi-fi gear is the closest they can get to having an idea of what they're buying now that brick-and-mortar stores with listening rooms are harder to reach. I'd also recommend The British Audiophile's take on speaker placement and distancing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHOYXjVJKKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHOYXjVJKKY
- mrkeen 6y ago
  This is a good start if you want to get into (or avoid) Guttenberg's stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfMg5P0_vJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfMg5P0_vJk Listen to him wax sarcastically about blind tests. Does he not get it? Or does he make his living from not getting it?
  - claudiawerner 6y ago
    I don't like everything he says, and I'm sometimes disappointed to see him refer to people who think Ethernet cables make no difference above $20 as "cable deniers" (though analogue cables can make a difference, especially interconnects) - but I don't think he's being dishonest, I think he's misinformed, and there's more than his "whatever works for you" takes on engineering matters. At least in my experience.

omegote 6y ago

I was (and still am) in the same situation as the author two years ago. I bought a pair of JBL LSR 305 that I placed at each side of the screen, roughly 120cm away from each other and at arms length from me. They're about 30cm away from the back wall. The problem I have is with the bass. Standing in the normal position to interact with my PC, the bass strength is low. Now, the moment I move back about 1 meter, the bass strength becomes great (the one I'd expect from this pair of speakers). I really don't know what to do :/

bombcar 6y ago
Try moving one speaker back and forth - they may be angled such that the different phases are canceling bass right where you sit.
grandinj 6y ago
You're probably in a room null when in your "normal position to interact with the PC". Try moving them closer to the back wall. Or there are room treatments like adding some kind of absorption panel to the problematic wall(s).
dsr_ 6y ago
Take a look at the back of your LSR305. There's a switch marked LF Trim. (There's also a HF Trim.) It has three positions: cut, normal, and boost. It's a built in EQ designed for handling room boundaries. You'll need to set it on both speakers.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  This, plus you could place isolation pads underneath the speakers to prevent the low frequencies from causing resonance in the desk or other platform they're on if they aren't already. You can find some pretty cheap options these days that should do the trick.
scns 6y ago
You can't trick physics. There are notes so low (huge wavelength), you can only hear them, if you are several meters away.

MotherFunker 6y ago

I think many people don't realise is that 'ideally' (generous use of ideally) there is no front wall (the wall behind the speakers. This is why large recording studios have soffit mounted speakers, some experts actually encourage pushing the speakers closer to the wall to try and get as close as possible to approximate this. Obviously there is a lot more nuance in this - Always take measurements and use your ears too. As always, Hi-Fi and Studio set-ups/advice are not entirely inter-operable, and a lot of online chat can be both camps talking simultaneously which is difficult for a reader to parse.

titzer 6y ago
Did you read the article? This is its basic conclusion.

whiddershins 6y ago

This kind of down to earth advice with a medium amount of technical explanation is fantastic. One thing I would mention is that rigid fiberglass corner traps seemed to do a lot in my studio. Also if you are going to talk about room modes, you are also going to want to think about the permeability of your walls and whether they are going to even reflect the frequency in question and set up a mode. And also we may want to make a distinction between making a listening environment that sounds amazing, and one that has utility. It can be easy for an intermediate or beginner at mixing to get really tricked by a great listening environment in to doing things that won’t translate. On the other hand, life is short, and listening to a beautiful set up is just a better quality of life if nothing else.

stinos 6y ago
you are also going to want to think about the permeability of your walls If I understand things correctly, this was missing a bit from the whole (otherwise very good) explanation in the article: it constantly mentions 'walls' and each time I can't help but think that the difference between a solid concrete 30cm thick wall and a 10cm plasterboard plus some thermal insulation makes a difference in how it reflects lower frequencies. To the point that in the latter case there might be not much reflection at all and you actually have to start to measure from the wall (or whatever) in the next room?
- cratermoon 6y ago
  What if you're practicing with your high school rock band in an old wooden barn with boards that have become rock-hard after losing most of its moisture?
  - multjoy 6y ago
    Doesn’t matter as you can’t hear anything over the snare anyway.
- greedo 6y ago
  Wood studs, drywall and fiberglass insulation don't do much to attenuate low frequencies. Fiberglass does almost nothing. Mass is the one thing that absorbs sound the best.

S_A_P 6y ago

I’m always a bit flummoxed by guidelines like this being taken as gospel. Sure I will start with the manufacture recommended placement if my room allows, but at the end of the day I have to hear the speakers so if it sounds good it is good rules for me. There really is no wrong if you like what you hear. Sure a rear port placed an inch from the wall will alter the response and likely cause chuffing as the air rushes in and out, but that falls under common sense to some degree. I guess one of the core tenets of “hifi” used to be flat frequency response from 20hz-20khz and no added coloration from the reproduction system. That’s fine but often times today’s music sounds crappy under those parameters. People like hyped bass and treble with a scooped midrange. That’s okay. The parameters shift slightly when using studio monitoring to create a mix for music that needs to translate to other playback environments but even then a perfectly flat response is not necessary. If you know that your monitors are bass shy and increasing the bass will make it sound muddy on the majority of other systems then that is a data point you keep in mind. Learning the quirks of your monitoring setup is very important in this scenario. The point being that the guidelines are a starting point, not the rule.

johnvanommen 6y ago
According to the research done by Harman/Samsung, listeners generally prefer a curve that's gently sloping by one decibel per octave. IE, if you want a pleasing sound, a loudspeaker that's playing 90dB at 100Hz should be playing 83dB at 16,800Hz. And the response curve should be consistent from point A to point B. This recommendation can be impacted by the power response of the speaker, but that's another subject...
munificent 6y ago
> at the end of the day I have to hear the speakers so if it sounds good it is good rules for me. There really is no wrong if you like what you hear. There are two very different goals that are easy to conflate and that the article isn't very clear about: 1. If you are a music listener or music producer focusing on making music, you just want a room that sounds great to you. If you're making music, you want a sound that inspires you and gets the creative juices flowing. 2. If you are a mixing or mastering engineer or a music producer focusing on polishing and mixing your work, you want a room that gives you insight on how the audio will sound in a wide variety of listening environments. Your goal is to get the song sounding as good on as many people's speakers, headphones, and rooms as possible and your own personal setup is a proxy for that. For example, if you only have a couple of tiny speakers that don't go below 50 Hz, your song may have subbass that you literally cannot hear. But when someone with a subwoofer plays the song, all of that comes out. If it's too loud or out of tune, the song sounds like trash, but you have no way of knowing. So the goal is a monitor setup that is relatively neutral so that the song doesn't sound better to you than it will to others. You want a fairly flat response so that you aren't inadvertently EQ-ing the song to cancel out peaks and valleys in your room because then that will imbalance the sound in other rooms. And you want to cover the full frequency range so you can hear everything others will be able to hear. If the songs sounds great in your room, but it sounds like garbage for everyone not in your room, it definitely is not great. Most articles about monitor placement tend to assume the goal is 2 more than 1. These days, the line is blurry because many musicians and producers are also doing a lot of the mixing.

dqpb 6y ago

For anyone else who is unfamiliar with “monitor” in this context, found this on Wikipedia: > Among audio engineers, the term monitor implies that the speaker is designed to produce relatively flat (linear) phase and frequency responses. In other words, it exhibits minimal emphasis or de-emphasis of particular frequencies, the loudspeaker gives an accurate reproduction of the tonal qualities of the source audio ("uncolored" or "transparent" are synonyms), and there will be no relative phase shift of particular frequencies—meaning no distortion in sound-stage perspective for stereo recordings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_monitor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_monitor

johnvanommen 6y ago

This article is unnecessarily complex, and offers solutions that are (mostly) applicable to older speakers. Most modern studio monitors put the tweeter in a waveguide. By doing that, it accomplishes two things: * The loudspeaker frequency response is consistent, no matter whether you're standing directly in front of the speaker, or to the sides. IE, the placement of the loudspeaker is less important than with older designs. * Most importantly, a waveguide takes the energy radiated by the driver and it focuses it into a narrower beam than a conventional tweeter. By doing this, reflections off of the sidewalls, ceiling and floor are less of an issue. To make a long story short, modern studio monitors with a waveguide are less fussy about placement. Reflections off of the sidewalls, ceilings and floor can still cause issues with lower midrange and midbass response, but these issues can be fixed with EQ to a large extent. The reason that EQ is less effective at high frequencies is because the wavelengths are so short. For instance, 5khz is 6.8cm long. Because it's so short, equalizing that frequency for one point in the room can screw it up at ANOTHER point in the room. Low frequencies are much longer, and because they're longer, EQ is more effective. For instance, 500Hz is 68cm long. Because of this long length, if you EQ a speaker to flatten out a peak at 500Hz, that EQ will be effective over a broad range of positions in the room.

moogleii 6y ago
> This article is unnecessarily complex, and offers solutions that are (mostly) applicable to older speakers. Wait, isn't the conclusion of the article to not overly worry about placement and just use your ears as a guide? The build-up is just background info, which I actually appreciated.
titzer 6y ago
> Reflections off of the sidewalls, ceilings and floor can still cause issues with lower midrange and midbass response, but these issues can be fixed with EQ to a large extent. I don't really believe this. Ever put speakers in an empty, stone-walled, wood-floored room? No EQ in the world is going to fix that. You need acoustic treatment in some shape or form, unless your walls are made out of cotton.
- 6y ago

chaz6 6y ago

The only thing that matters is what sounds best to you. You should place them where they sound best for your listening position. This is not a scientific process. It is a trial and error process.

stinos 6y ago
Well, yes, but what this article tries to do is hint to where you can start your trial to reduce the number of error to begin with.

hatsunearu 6y ago

The real answer is: unless you have an anechoic chamber, you wanna have an EQ to tune out the room effects. It's not as expensive as you might think too.

benlivengood 6y ago

For people who have put significant effort into setting up a room with good acoustics and speakers; is the sound quality significantly better than good headphones? I can understand the other reasons speakers are nice; being able to hear other things besides the audio playback, sharing the sound with other people at the same time, etc.

aldanor 6y ago
Depends on your definition of better. A lot of the time this will be done in a mixing room with studio monitors yielding as flat a response curve as possible (and without any room reverb). You will get a better sound in that it's precise, but it's not necessarily more pleasant to listen to. As for precision: it's easier to hear the panning / stage in good headphones just because it's so augmented. The low end - no matter how good the headphones are, you can't rely on them to mix it properly, you need good monitors. If you mix the low end on headphones, there's always a high probability that it will only sound good on this pair of headphones and not translate to other setups.
lrem 6y ago
I'm not a musician, but got recently a pair of Presonus Eris 3.5 monitors as my desk speakers. I find that more pleasant to use than headphones I have (AT BPHS1 and Bose QC35).
hammock 6y ago
Headphones artificially increase the size of the stereo soundstage, that is one reason why it is preferred to mix audio on speakers

waynesonfire 6y ago

this is the type of article that made me season my cast iron with flaxseed oil. some rando internet guy telling you things.

thisisbrians 6y ago

Having spent a bunch of time trying to figure this all out myself, as well, some practical tips (confirmed anecdotally by yours truly): - Place your speakers such that they form an equilateral triangle, with the tweeters pointing directly at your head while you are seated in the control position. Near-field monitors are made for focusing on a 'sweet spot' like this. Using purpose-built speaker stands is the easiest route here. - Treat the first reflection points with foam, or anything that absorbs/scatters sound (e.g. I hung a huge shag rug on the back wall) - Break up smooth surfaces (walls/floors/windows) with other absorptive/non-smooth decorations and materials. Rug on floor, couch at back of room, curtains, even a bookcase; all will help absorb and scatter sound. - A good rule of thumb is to spend as much money on 'treating' the room as the speakers themselves (even great speakers will sound like trash in a room with no treatment). - When using the speakers for mixing/mastering work, listen at a conversational volume. The lower the volume, the less the room matters (and the room matters a lot). - You will get far better sound from decent headphones (I have HD650s) than from all but the most pristinely designed/tuned monitor setups. Probably would cost well over $10k and a lot of knowhow to beat the headphones.

52-6F-62 6y ago
I like the Tom Petty method—I'm interpreting here, and paraphrasing in my own format based on a longer discussion and probably mixing up some of this with other knowledge. Mix— headphones Master— monitors Test— Toyota Corolla (Petty, said something like "just about everybody's gonna be listening in a Toyota"—they'd literally print a tape and run it out to someone's car)
- thisisbrians 6y ago
  I laughed at the Toyota test, because there's a ton of truth in there. Got to test the mix on bad speakers to see if it translates...humbling, but necessary for a good mix. I do test in my car (coincidentally, it is a Corolla) as well :)
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    Isn't that the reason NS10's became popular as monitors, too? "If you can make it sound good on a pair of NS10's it'll sound good everywhere" being the mode†. It's definitely sage advice! † edit: Looks like I fell victim to hearsay. It's just something I'd heard so many times for so many years I assumed it was true, and it may be partly, but here's a great write up on the subject—tangential to the main thread: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story

genericacct 6y ago

This assumes everybody's hearing is the same but i guess it isn't and it also changes with age..

muxator 6y ago

> You know those mono-to-stereo mixing tricks that you’re not “supposed” to do because of mono compatibility, but you end up doing all the time anyway? You know, like the one where you double the track, pan the two versions out and delay one side? Is there a name for this effect? I'd like to hear an example!

stan_rogers 6y ago
I can't help you with a name, but it's one of the tricks that YouTube guitarist/instructor Paul Davids details in this video [0] - doubling down on it. (Basically he double-mics his guitar, sending each of the mics hard to one side, then again delayed and attenuated hard to the other side as well. What you get from that is a pretty good simulation of opposite-wall reflection from a larger space.) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww-cH29IGeM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww-cH29IGeM
- muxator 6y ago
  That video was really clear, thanks!

anodyne33 6y ago

This takes me back to working in a few (slowly going to way of the buffalo) "professional" or "big" studios. Both of the A studios I worked in had a big set of Genelecs in the bulkhead and two or three more mid and near field monitors just above or behind the console meter bridge. Each served it's own purpose and all the mixing guys I saw wound swap between them fairly regularly. In that situation it was about emulating different scenarios, from the 4" block speakers to get a feel for what someone would hear on an old car stereo to mid field Dynaudios that were more flat than hyped to get a feel for what the home audiophile might experience. That's not a practical approach for a small studio (either in size or budget) but having been out of that world for a long time it makes me wonder if someone would be better served with two or three pairs of reasonably priced pair of speakers rather than trying to perfect the sound of one pair that aren't going to reflect (no pun intended) other playback environments that aren't acoustically optimized.

sjcoles 6y ago
Hearing damage plays a role too I think. Aesop Rock is one that comes to mind where you can literally hear the hearing damage in the resulting mix. Late Zappa the same thing happened.
thisisbrians 6y ago
Astute. The goal isn't to get the mix sounding good on one particular listening system, but being able to hear the raw, unadulterated signal as well as possible with knowledge of how it will or won't translate in other environments. Always good to have multiple sets of speakers to test those assumptions out in real-time. Interestingly, even the geometry of your specific ears will color the resulting sound that is heard, which is why referencing to commercial tracks is so helpful in the process.

asdfjkhjhu33 6y ago

This article does not mention that scientific measurement with a calibrated measurement microphone can take all of the guesswork out of speaker placement, just like you need a calibrated color measurement puck (and associated color-management software) to guarantee accurate color on computer monitors and printers. A measurement microphone tells you if the 200Hz frequency is too loud or too quiet with respect to the 1000Hz frequency, and so on, just like color management tells you if red #FF0000 is oversaturated or undersaturated with respect to the sRGB or DCI-P3 or whatever color space you are targeting. I bought a UMIK-1 microphone, downloaded the factory .txt calibration file, and used the roomeqwizard.com software to tune my systems. Works great. Human audible sound travels in waves at frequencies in the 16Hz-20KHz range. Those waves bounce around the room and interact to make certain frequencies louder and others quieter ("standing waves"). This room response is especially important below 250-500Hz: search for "Schroeder Frequency" if curious.

baq 6y ago
denon's/marantz mid-range and above AVRs have audyssey which is allegedly quite good. any opinions on this solution compared to what you did?
- iuweiru8787 6y ago
  I am the OP but I threw out my throw-away account. I don't use consumer AVRs; I use pro-audio equipment for producing the content consumed on consumer AVR equipment. I tried some of these fancy boxes that you upload EQ curves to for room correction (such as different MiniDSP-branded correction boxes which are very popular) but I've gotten measurably best results (with my measurement mic) using old-school 31-band graphic equalizers that have the 31 physical fader sliders you move up and down. These old-school analog devices have lower latency in milliseconds than the hi-tech DSP stuff which needs extra time to buffer and process the signal in ram. The fanciest digital correction available in those AVR type devices (such as Dirac brand correction) delays the entire signal by as much as 100+ milliseconds (making gaming and live instruments impossible because the audio lags so far behind the event that produced the audio, like how thunder lags behind a lightning flash). The theory is that because a 20Hz frequency has a 50ms cycle-time, you need to delay the audio signal at least 50ms across the entire 16Hz-20KHz spectrum to "see" what you are correcting down near 20Hz. However, multiple blind listening studies have shown that the human ear is not time-latency sensitive to the lowest base frequencies. These frequencies are "felt" more than heard and the brain lags with letting you "feel" the deep rumble. Old-school analog equalizers only delay the actual low-frequencies that correction is applied to (the frequencies you actually slide up or down on the physical slider/fader controls). So if you slide the 50Hz fader then only that frequency has its timing altered, and the brain can definitely hear the loudness correction at 50Hz when Godzilla roars or the earthquake in your movie happens but it can't hear the timing difference if you delay the 50Hz wave slightly in order to correct its loudness. So you gain loudness accuracy (which you can easily hear) at the expense of timing accuracy (which at low frequencies you can't hear). Also, I'm really picky about speaker hiss and a good 31-band analog EQ introduces less noise/hiss than more expensive digital EQ boxes I've tested. I put my measurement mic right up to the tweater and recorded the hiss that the digital box made and took a screenshot of the spectrogram, then compared with my analog EQs and my analog EQs were better, noticeably enough that I didn't even need the mic in order to hear the hiss difference. So my advice is to get a UMIK-1 measurement mic and a 31-band graphic EQ, then download roomeqwizard.com software and learn to use it. It involves walking around your room with the mic while playing constant test tones and watching a sound spectrogram graph on your computer screen. Even though the test tone is constant, when you walk around your room with the mic you can see and hear how the tone changes due to the standing wave phenomenon. It will open your eyes (and ears) to how the room you are in affects the sound coming out of speakers. And rather than reading articles on the web you can actually experience for yourself the scientific reality of how it works, just like in high school chemistry class you see what happens with your own eyes when you mix vinegar with baking soda, rather than just reading theory in a book. The actual physical experimental confirmation is crucial. Adjusting anything over 250-500Hz is a waste of time because if you shift your head (or measurement mic) just a foot or two you get a completely different frequency response. When you test this yourself you won't need to take my word for it or read web articles shilling snake oil audio products. Your eyes and ears and calibrated measurement mic will confirm the scientific reality for you. As to other equipment... at the affordable lower end you want a USB or Thunderbolt interface with balanced XLR connectors connected either directly to studio monitors or to an equipment rack with the amps, crossovers, equalizers, etc needed to power big passive subwoofers. The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (~$160 on Amazon) is a best seller USB audio interface and crystal clear. I'm listening through one right now and I love it. Be aware that if using a Mac with a T2 security chip (2016 and newer Macs) you need to use an external thunderbolt USB hub because T2 occasionally cuts out the internal USB; scroll down this article if curious: https://tidbits.com/2019/04/05/what-does-the-t2-chip-mean-for-mac-usage/ https://tidbits.com/2019/04/05/what-does-the-t2-chip-mean-fo... Here is a screenshot from the article of the T2 hiccup actually being recorded: you can see the audio waveform briefly cut out: https://tidbits.com/uploads/2019/04/T2-hiccup.jpg https://tidbits.com/uploads/2019/04/T2-hiccup.jpg None of Apple's "fixes" fixed the problem. This was the last straw for me and many other audio guys so now we use both Ubuntu and Windows 10 with WSL instead of the Mac. Most photos of $1M+ recording studios I see nowaways have Windows 10 desktops. If you don't want Win10 telemetry spying on you you need to set up a pi-hole or external firewall box, but M1 Macs and all iOS devices report your location and other telemetry to Apple now so you also need an external firewall for Apple now too, but I'm digressing from audio.... Back to audio, the UMIK-1 USB measurement mic is usually ~$99 new on Amazon/eBay/wherever. The roomeqwizard.com is free (as in gratis, not open source) Java software that can use the mic. For studio monitors, Yamaha and Adam Audio are both good and affordable. Many like the JBLs as long as you aren't too picky about hiss. Genelec is the very best and provably so by independent scientific measurement (see audiosciencereview.com measurements). But Genelec is stupid expensive, over $1k for a pair of their budget monitors. Anyway, this post is long enough and turning into an article. To summarize, get a Scarlett USB interface (~$160), the UMIK-1 ($99), a good pair of 5" or 7" studio monitors (Yamaha, Adam Audio, or maybe JBL, $300-$600 for the pair), and a graphic EQ. The bargain-basement Rockville REQ231 for ~$130 is essentially a cheap but good clone of a more expensive EQ. You can also spend $250-$400+ for Behringer or dbx/JBL which looks prettier in the rack but honestly doesn't sound any different.

rapjr9 6y ago

If you use a 31 band EQ on the sound going to the monitors isn't that going to alter the phase in each frequency band? So what you hear will have a different phase response than what is being recorded. Maybe an FIR EQ would be better? I believe that's why the mini-DSP boxes are popular, you can EQ without introducing phase changes.

teknico 6y ago

This made me laugh: "(And what does “behave” even mean? It’s not like we are talking about children here.)" Are they serious? :-D