Speaker placement, speaker placement, all hail speaker placement, speaker placements make all the difference! It'll get ugly before it gets pretty. Your system isn't capable of what it could have been if speaker placement not done right. When speaker placement is a concern, the rule of thirds, the rule of fifths the rule of Ns, they remain theoretical until you get the hang of speaker placement. Theoretical assumptions stay as assumptions. Sad but true, a majority of the systems out there didn't get enough of speaker placement experimenting to allow their system to shine. Want sound quality a notch higher without spending a dime, dig into speaker placement. It's a long and lonely process.
Taking speaker placement lightly ranked number one fault in compromised sound quality, nevertheless. A sin of omission. Mass adds insult to injury. With 100kg speaker apiece, can you blame them? Endurance is tested, serious muscles are required. Well, what needs to be done be done if your will is strong. The reward is there for the one that slugs it out. Talk in this instance becomes so shallow when even the fundamental is undone.
In the course of speaker placement, your listening skill will be sharpened. The question remains if you have dialled in the focus as with a DSLR manual focus. A sharp focus point gets fat-free sound, a sound that's pure and concise. Even with a warmish sound, you'll not be missing highs. In recognition of genuine accuracy, what happened in the recording session is unverifiable, now, we don't want to run wild with our sonic perspectives to the extent it isn't what it is.
In the wake of speaker placement, the little Jordan JX92 full-range speakers, 4 feet to the ear, huge toe-in in headphone listening mode, throw a huge soundstage that remarkably beguiling. Holographic with the enthralling floating images, absolutely, my beloved Belles proved no match in this regard. That was the best disappearing act I had experienced alongside the original Audio Physic Steps since I can't remember how long ago. I can't stress speaker is a compromise, a stereo system is a compromise. Much to the disgust of audio snobs, the humble Jordan JX92s weren't good enough for them, let alone listening to them. Obviously, their egoistic got the better of them. Audio has become more than sound, it has become a status symbol. Is high-end audio pricing itself into extinction? In a niche market with a small pool of consumers? Let's not deny that only a handful of companies will do well in high-end audio, they can only sell limited units. Pardon me, I couldn't get passed the psychological warfare in my head accepting equipment that cost equivalently, a house. Sorry for my idiosyncratic, high-end prices are unjustifiable.
In all likelihood, there'll be more than one speaker placement. Eventually, your preferred presentation dictates the placement. In the case of without a dedicated sound room where a system serving as family entertainment aka wide sweet spot, no best seat to fight over with the family members, you're most likely to end up with a bokeh background. Premier seats in a concert hall cost higher for a reason, definitely. If I ever go to a concert, it's either a good seat or no go.
The common practice of taking the front and sidewall measurements and locating the placement is fundamentally a flaw given two underlying caveats; asymmetrical walls and uneven flooring. You assume they're alright. Parallel walls and even flooring are left wanting.
Slanted walls, the asymmetrical tile pieces leading to the cove joint is clearly telling. Brick walls are common in Europe and Asia, 5mm variance is, unfortunately, the case. Unlike drywall in the States, homes building is supply and install, you can expect even walls.
Thus, taking front wall and side walls measurement will arrive at two dissimilar tweeter-ear distances. One channel of your speaker will sound louder. Besides, the unequal tweeter heights will be another trouble citing off-vertical axis response. Being ignorant of these bad boys, or you'll find the focal of the imaging is found wanting. The effective solution, take the bull by the horns, measure the tweeter to ear distance to attain equal length and use a laser guide for levelling, instead.
With all those measures taken, you're still not out of the woods. The common practice is the factory produced speaker driver units are not matched, unless the exotic ones. I know Accuton matches its driver units. Snell Acoustics went the distance using compensation crossover networks resolve this issue. It will come down to listening to final adjust the placement. Once you got passed these bumps back to back, the rewards in-waiting is an eerie window of musical insights, with visuals in the back of your head. It's all worth the efforts. So, never, never be a smart alec moving other's speakers for you never know how much effort the host has taken to arrive at where he is. If you really wanted to help, tape the floor before doing so. Or otherwise, you will never get back where it was.
Super tweeter, love it or hate it. For months I tried to blend the super tweeters to the mains. This lesson proved to be valuable. Never mind the different acoustic energy dispersions, what matter is what you can hear. Regardless of the frequency cutoff points, 15kHz is still clearly discernible given that some suggest we could barely discern them after 50. A mere 1mm will impose an impact on the focal point. You can tell I spent quite some time finding the right spot to blend the super tweeter in with the mains with variables like the gain, frequency cutoff points and time-alignment through an empirical process.
Your work cut out by the speaker designers for the integration of active built-in subs speakers via a crossover implementation. Sit back and enjoy. Third-party sub integration isn't easy. Though I have thought about adding a sub into my system rendering a meatier lower end, I killed the idea. Unless with the use steep slope electronic crossover, most subs utilize low pass filter to pass signals at a frequency lower than the cutoff frequency couldn't do the trick. In due course, you can smell the troubles with the mains and the subs playing the same frequency bandwidth concurrently. A tough act to pull through. My last short stint ended after discerning phase distortions, particularly on cello. Frequency cut-off, gain and again the placement will influence the sound.
And lastly, your hearing. Hearing imbalance or hearing impairment, that's just too bad. I know of no manufacturers who don't conduct listening tests before rolling out their products no matter how perfect the measurements might suggest. If you only know how the designers tweak their products to sound to their liking, they have their own cookbooks. What's on paper stays on the paper, the real test lies in the listening regardless of any product nor system. I certainly don't buy the idea that expensive systems equate good sound, that only wishful thinking.
