[Bai Shen]

How does everyone have their speakers placed? I need to replace my ancient 2.1 setup and I'm thinking of moving to a larger 2.0 set.

I've seen some people mount the speakers above their monitors but I'm not sure if that would be too high. I don't have room to mount them on the sides of my desk. If I only had one monitor it'd be easier to arrange things.

 

[wagninger]

It’s not ideal, but if you don’t have the space, try to put them over your monitors and angle the tweeter towards your ears.

When I had 2 monitors, I just used midfield speakers, back to one monitor and I’m doing nearfield.

 

[Bai Shen]

It’s not ideal, but if you don’t have the space, try to put them over your monitors and angle the tweeter towards your ears.

When I had 2 monitors, I just used midfield speakers, back to one monitor and I’m doing nearfield.

What defines midfield and nearfield? I'm not sure why you chose what you did.

 

[wagninger]

Ah sorry Well, midfield monitors have a wider sweet spot and are generally bigger, in this case I had a bigger room that could deal with the bass boost from the 3-way KH300 speakers. Allowed me to move a bit left to right and still have a very accurate representation of the sound stage. I also did not have to worry about mounting them on my desk.

In the second picture, I'm really confining myself to sit directly in front of one monitor, and you can really hear the sound shift when you do the tiniest movements - but bass is less of an issue. Recommended listening distance is about 1-1.5m away from the speakers.

 

[Bai Shen]

My room is a pretty typical size and I'm really only listening to it while sitting at the computer. I unfortunately don't have the wall space to do something like your midfield setup. To do something like your nearfield setup would require me to put the speaker between my monitors.

I was contemplating something like this to mount the speakers behind and above the monitors but I'm not sure how well it would work.

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=600024

 

[gregorio]

I've seen some people mount the speakers above their monitors but I'm not sure if that would be too high.

The height doesn’t really matter, as long as you angle the speakers down so the drivers are equidistant and pointing directly at your ears. In fact studios quite commonly do this, particularly with their main monitors.

What defines midfield and nearfield?

There isn’t a specific definition, just a rough one. Nearfields are designed for the listening position to be 1-2m from the speakers, while midfields are more like 2-5m although again, these are just rough figures. It is not recommended to use midfield monitors as nearfields unless the manufacturer specifically states otherwise. Typically, the size and position of the drivers on midfields is obviously optimised for midfield monitoring, using them as nearfields could well cause issues, for example perceived timing and/or freq issues due to the drivers in each monitor being physically further apart.

G

 

[wagninger]

My room is a pretty typical size and I'm really only listening to it while sitting at the computer. I unfortunately don't have the wall space to do something like your midfield setup. To do something like your nearfield setup would require me to put the speaker between my monitors.

I was contemplating something like this to mount the speakers behind and above the monitors but I'm not sure how well it would work.

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=600024

This would work great, if you can put a wedge on top to angle the speakers towards you or find a version of it where you can adjust the angle.