Speaker Placement Video

[metaphacts]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

I stopped after 5 or 6 minutes of him bloviating and speaking about things that are not central to the subject.

The presenter would do well to take a basic course in teaching or instruction, his content is poorly framed intellectually, and the content is presented even more poorly.

One of the key things that is missing is he is trying to tell you WHAT to do without providing the WHY behind it. The problem is the WHY provides context for the viewer to drive true understanding of the principles, and thus drives INSIGHT into what ACTIONS need to be taken.

Without the WHY, its just a set of steps that the viewer does without knowing why they are important.

I spent over 10 years teaching very complex best practices, data analysis, and statistical disciplines to PhD-level scientists and engineers (Design for Six Sigma).

If I had the curricula at hand, I'm pretty confident could present this in 5 minutes or less and not waste the viewers time.

[crwilli]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Speaking of speaker set up, some of you may remember this study I did to integrate my REL sub into my 2-channel system. It's a statistical approach called "Design of Experiment", aka DOE. This approach lets you analyze multiple factors simultaneously, and determine which ones, with statistical power, influence the desired result, in this case, real-time in-room frequency response.

In this DOE, I originally had 3 factors, sub Gain, sub crossover (both continuous factors) and bass port foam plug in/out (a discrete factor). Turns out the only two that were statistically significant were the sub gain and X/O. There was also a statistically signifcant interaction between sub gain and sub crossover (the plot at upper right)



And the result: the blue line is my real-time in-room response before, and the green line is after optimizing the sub settings for integration of the REL for improving bass response. You can also see I was able to flatten out a mode that resulted in a significant ~8 dB peak at 70-80 Hz as well.



Here is a 3-dimensional "surface plot" of a 155 Hz peak based on what settings the factors were at...


Data. Science. DOE. All good stuff.

I love this work. Did you consider testing speaker/sub placement variables?

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by crwilli

I love this work. Did you consider testing speaker/sub placement variables?

Hi CR!
Thank you for your comments.

I would have tested placement, but in my small townhome, I am very constrained as to where I can place my Dyns. Right now they are on each side of my center rack, 7 feet apart (per Dyn's specifications), and about 30 inches in front of the short, rear, "half-wall" that separates my "living room" from my front entrance stairwell.

Here's an older pic before I removed my Mac Mini from the second audio rack and replaced it with a Sonore microRendu.



Here's the right corner of the halfwall behind the right speaker; there are two Auralex foam bass traps back there and you can just make out my REL sub (the black cube). I cover the TV with a felt "blanket" when I listen, but I'm going to have a custom acoustical panel made like Dan had made to place over the HD TV when listening.



Here's part of the left side, showing the big window behind the couch. I adjust the wooden blinds to be partly open at an angle and they function as an acoustic diffuser. The left Dyn fires down a long hallway to the 2nd bedroom, bath and master bedroom (where the Mac Mini now resides) so there is effectively no rear wall.



When I'm listening casually, I just leave the Dyns as shown, firing straight forward.

When I'm listening critically, I pull the right speaker out (its on Herbie's decoupling teflon gliders, so its slides easily on the carpet) and I sit and listen along the "diagonal" of the room, with me at the vertex of a triangle relative to the two speakers, as shown. I'm about 8 ft from the speakes. This setup actually has some advantages as it places the speakers along the long axis, but also lets the right Dyn fire down the hall as well.



Also, when doing critical listening, I either cover the coffee table with a foam yoga mat or move it off to the side of the living room. You can see the setup here with the NIST calibrated mic I used for the in-room measurements sitting in my Zero G chair when I did the DOE. I measured the distance very carefully from each speaker so that it was exactly the same distance for the L and R speakers. You can see the USB mike preamp sitting on the coffee table when I was taking the REW measurements for doing the DOE.




My setup is rather unorthodox in my small townhome, but and I say this with all due scientiific objectivity, it sounds really quite good. I think its due in no small part to only having a short wall with a very large tall space behind the speakers, and effectively no "back wall" in the front of the speakers.

[Robc33]

Originally Posted by Poppyhome

Bill.........wondering if you knew or know Bob Robbins?

"Something was always missing though, and Bob didn’t know what it was, or how to verbalize it. Then, about 13 years ago, he was given the opportunity to go to Sumiko in Berkeley and was trained in their magical process – Master Speaker Setup. Everything he’d been looking and listening for in audio was discovered – the emotional involvement in the music. It convinced Bob that all the talk about the importance of specs, the “criticality” of equipment interfacing, all the buzz words so popular in discussions about audio, were, for the most part, irrelevant. The most important component in any audio or theater system is the proper placement and positioning of the speakers into the listening environment. Putting the speakers where they truly belong so they don’t fight each other, so they work in total unison not only with the other speaker but also with the room, is the end all be all for optimal music reproduction in the home. It will allow the music lover to experience music played in the home with all the sensory “chills and thrills” one gets when attending a concert."

Ron

I flew Bob Robbins out from Denver last year to set up my Strads. He was a nice enough gentleman, but he found the first position that the bass sounded correct, and set up both speakers from there. It is my understanding that there will be several positions that will sound good, and to experiment with them.
I have spoken to Jim Smith, and flew down to his place in Atlanta, to listen, and get some tips from him. He explained that it is a long process, and usually takes a full day. I have tried it myself for countless hours, with varied degrees of success. Bob said we were done after about an hour, maybe an hour and a half to be generous. It sounded Ok, a bit different than where I had them. So, I left them there for a few weeks, and eventually started to play with placement again.
I now have them sounding the best that I have heard in my room. They are almost 2 feet further into the room than where Bob set them up.

[metaphacts]

Originally Posted by Robc33

I flew Bob Robbins out from Denver last year to set up my Strads. He was a nice enough gentleman, but he found the first position that the bass sounded correct, and set up both speakers from there. It is my understanding that there will be several positions that will sound good, and to experiment with them.
I have spoken to Jim Smith, and flew down to his place in Atlanta, to listen, and get some tips from him. He explained that it is a long process, and usually takes a full day. I have tried it myself for countless hours, with varied degrees of success. Bob said we were done after about an hour, maybe an hour and a half to be generous. It sounded Ok, a bit different than where I had them. So, I left them there for a few weeks, and eventually started to play with placement again.
I now have them sounding the best that I have heard in my room. They are almost 2 feet further into the room than where Bob set them up.

Knowing the right questions to ask to confirm you are done can be difficult. Strads like many of the great speakers out there, get to good very quickly. However, getting to what a Strad should be is a whole different level.

Jim is correct. Allot a full day. If everything goes right you can be done much sooner. Not very likely, but possible. I say that having at one point set up as many, or possibly more Strads than anyone alive. And knowing that the final movements will not show up on typical set up measurements, though the correct movements/choice will be quite obvious.

Not sure why Bob would quit so early on your set. Even if you walk in and it is the best you have ever heard the speaker, you meticulously document that point. If after many hours or working the process ( and documenting results), you return to that point, so be it. But by then you have asked all the right questions necessary to return to that point.

Again, ymmv.