Rake Angle on 800 D3 Series

[djohnson013]

I am curious to how many members with the new generation (D3's) have adjusted the rake angle on your speakers. In others words, changing the angle that the speaker faces you. I used a level and squared up the sides as well as the fronts when I extended the spikes. So both front and sides are perpendicular to the floor.

I am thinking about playing around with the front faces and changing the angle to see what it does in my listening area. I plan to adjust the speaker with the tweeter facing a little downward and then try facing a little upward.

I own the 803D3's. They are about 8.5 feet apart and I sit back about 10 feet with about 5 degrees tow in.

Just wanted to see if anyone else has played with this and what your results were.



Thanks
David

[JMD]

David

I would think that unless your seating position has the center of your ears that high off the floor, 47 inches, you would need to tilt them down. That is fairly easy to do if you have a wall reasonably close behind your seating position with a laser level and a large piece of cardboard or paper with an 'X" marking the height of your ears. Pretty much standard procedure with Vandersteen speakers. If no wall or way to hold paper in position it will be trial and error.

[joey_v]

I don't think the tweeter is exactly where your ears have to be, I just don't understand why BW would position the tweeter at 46" if that were truly the case. The acoustic center is significantly below that.

With my system, I just try to get my ears above 37". Once I've accomplished that, I have not played with rake angle. YMMV.

[GregGale]

Based on the review in Stereophile JA during measuring the 802D3 stated, the 802D3's "optimal listening axis will be a little below tweeter height based on the output of the tweeter being very slightly forward in time".

Maybe the 802D3 was designed this way purposely knowing the listeners ear height will be below the tweeter height.

[JMD]

If you have both sets of spikes run all the way in, depending on your distance from the speakers we are only talking about raising the rear spikes fractions of an inch.