[ADUHF]

I wonder, btw, if speakers without a rear-firing port would really need that much space from the front wall?

 

[bigshot]

There’s ideal arrangements and ones that fit your particular circumstances. These are principles to be applied, not rules to follow without thinking.

The port isn’t the problem. It’s the way sound radiates. If a speaker is too close to the wall it will couple with the wall and the sound will suffer. Someone else might know more about the acoustics involved.

 

[Paul Mohr]

The rule of thirds is an ok place to start but it isn't always perfect. And depending on your room, the layout and your furniture or whatever it might simply not be possible. Sometimes compromises need to be made. And not every speaker will the sound the same in every room so it may need to be moved closer or farther away from a wall. Mostly will effect how the bass responds. That is normally the hardest thing to overcome in a room since bass waves are large. Say for instance you are using small bookshelf speakers that don't have a lot of bass. Moving them closer to the wall could improve the bass response. If you tower speakers with large woofers you might want to avoid putting them closer to the wall. Also how the room is treated will effect it. Is it an empty room with bare walls and hard floor or is a furnished room with a book case or two and carpeting?

And again the standard of placing the speakers in a triangle as in they should be as far apart from each other they are away from you isn't set in stone either. Sometimes moving them closer together a bit can make them image better. Some use 80 percent. Whatever the distance is from you put them 80% of that apart from each other. And toe in depends on the speaker design. And as Bigshot said every speaker has different dispersion properties. It depends on the width of the cabinet, the type of driver being used (normally the tweeter) and how the crossover was designed.

And there is always the nearfield set up, which I kind of like myself.

Sometimes it takes a lot of effort and messing around to get thing perfect. I wouldn't kill yourself or agonize over it though. Most of the time as long as the speakers are not is some weird screwed placing it should be ok. Like one farther away than the other by like a foot. Or one farther off to the side or one close to wall and the other in the middle of the room. You know crazy stuff like that. If they are in a fairly normal spot you can normally dial in the imaging by playing with toe in in small increments. Or moving them slightly closer or farther away from each other.

There are tons of guides and videos about speaker placement on the internet. Even papers and lectures on it.

 

[bigshot]

Sometimes moving them closer together a bit can make them image better.

That is true with larger rooms where the sound drops out in the middle because the speakers are too far apart. But with a 5.1 system you have a center channel which allows you to double the normal "8 foot apart between mains" rule.

Really, the trick to knowing how to set up a speaker system is knowing how to bend the rules to optimize results, not just blindly following them. It isn't cut and dried.

 

[71 dB]

I think the rule of thirds was only intended as a rough starting point.

It is a good starting point. The sound can be finetuned by moving the speakers and listening point. Even a couple of inches can make a difference. Stereo image can be optimized by toeing speakers in. Often the problem is not to know what to do, but the room and placement of furniture not allowing it. Often people don't like to have their speakers "in the middle of the room" far from the walls so their push them near the walls/corners and the sound is crap.

 

[castleofargh]

I use the method where you use a mic and move stuff around until you get lucky because you have no idea what's going on. Once a bunch of measurements aren't as bad as they were before, I pretend to be done.

The other solution is to follow some theoretical guide, like Pastime paradise.
"they've been spending most their lives living in standing waves paradise".

I'm not clear about all the things he mentions because I'm not a speaker expert, but I do care about at least:
dissipation
isolation
confirmation
integration
verification
vibration
stimulation



I'll now escort myself out.