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Speaker Separation Distance

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Posted on February 14, 2017 at 05:26:34
rosendds@frontiernet.net
Audiophile

Posts: 599
Location: North East
Joined: November 13, 2010
 My 1.7s are about 8' apart measured from the inside edge.My seat is 10' from the speakers.If I'm not right in the center,I can hear left & right speakers with less center sound stage.I read 50-60% speaker separation of seat distance.Is that 50-60% rule good to go by?My tweeters are in and I'm toed in so they cross at my feet.

 

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RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 07:01:12
ahendler
Audiophile

Posts: 5151
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Joined: January 24, 2003
 What is the size of the room?
How far out into the room are they?
How far from the side walls?
Try pointing speakers straight ahead
Do a search for Limage/HK setup and give it a try
Alan

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 07:07:38
Satie
Audiophile

Posts: 5426
Joined: July 6, 2002
 All setup guidelines are approximate, you need to experiment. As a rule, the panel speakers need a goodly distance from the front wall. at leat 3 ft. and better yet 5 ft. one of the effects of being too close to the front wall is a sunken and diffuse center image so that the individual speakers are easily heard as separate sources.The 1.7 are supposed to require more toe in than the predecessors but the drivers are roughly time aligned in the tweeters out position. That may improve central image. Try it on your setup with tweeters out. Listening distance is rather easy to determine by trial and error, so just proceed with adjusting the seating for each speaker adjustment.

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 08:07:36
rosendds@frontiernet.net
Audiophile

Posts: 599
Location: North East
Joined: November 13, 2010
 The room is 23' long by 16' wide & the speakers are pulled more than 1/2 way into the room.The speakers are about 3' from the side walls.I may try moving them 1' closer together and see if it fills in the center stage at seating locations on the sofa that are not in the center sweet spot.

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 08:57:45
Satie
Audiophile

Posts: 5426
Joined: July 6, 2002
 So you have the speakers on the long wall?

If so, you should start with trying the speakers with tweeters out and adjust toe in, starting with the speakers flat.

Do you have any treatments on the back wall? If not, start by trying out a fabric covered sofa cushion behind you.

Given sufficient spacing from the front wall, there should be a position which provides a rather wide sweet spot sufficient for a 3 seat sofa where the center position is "perfect" and the side seats having more diffuse imaging and more obvious individual speaker output, but not as bad as you describe.

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 09:19:01
JBen
Audiophile

Posts: 3082
Location: South FL
Joined: May 18, 2008
Contributor
  Since: July 26, 2010
 Long wall? Wow, those must be the long-rumored 1.7i_Landscape! LOL

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 09:26:39
russ69
Audiophile

Posts: 951
Joined: December 13, 2009
 IMHO, the closer to an equilateral triangle, the better. Slide a chair a couple of feet closer and see how it sounds.

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 10:03:26
rosendds@frontiernet.net
Audiophile

Posts: 599
Location: North East
Joined: November 13, 2010
 I determined the seating position by listening for the best bass response.The back wall has a window that has a heavy pleated curtain and the wall space adjacent to the window has pillows stacked.The two rear corners have DIY 20'tube bass traps.Everything sounds very good.I noticed hearing two separate speakers when not sitting in the sweet spot.I turn my head to the side slightly when not in the sweet spot to get improved center sound stage.The speakers are now 80% apart of the distance to the listening position.I will try to move them 1'closer which then will be 70%.From the current sweet spot the vocals are centered.

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 10:35:43
Satie
Audiophile

Posts: 5426
Joined: July 6, 2002
 I don't think the speaker's distance from each other and the distance to the central listening position is going to materially affect the off center imaging, since these positioning geometries can be compensated for with toe in adjustments. The change in the listening angle provides just a change in the size of the soundstage, given sufficient clearance from the walls. What these angles do not change substantially is the size of the sweet spot and the clarity and definition of images from the side seats.

The main effects on the off center imaging are had from tweeters out vs. in and toe in angles. The off center seat can have better imaging at the expense of image definition at the center. The drivers can only be optimally aligned for one listening seat since they are arrayed laterally, as opposed to a conventional speaker or single driver speaker where there is vertical driver alignment or no alignment issues with a single driver having reasonably good dispersion..In these latter cases the lateral change in seat position allows near optimal imaging to be retained at the side seats.

The best stereo coverage is to be had by a single line source driver covering 200hz-11khz and having good dispersion throughout that range, supplemented by a woofer and supertweeter. Even then, the side seats will not provide quite the ideal imaging as the center seat. Another option is having the tweeter kick in at around 1khz to cover most of the imaging related signal and having lesser sensitivity to lateral differences in driver offsets. The 3way 1.7 is not quite the perfect speaker for a wide stereo field.

.

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 12:36:45
JBen
Audiophile

Posts: 3082
Location: South FL
Joined: May 18, 2008
Contributor
  Since: July 26, 2010
 LOL, Satie, your statement "The 3way 1.7 is not quite the perfect speaker for a wide stereo field." may sound inadvertently misleading for people not familiar with your more experienced perspective.

I think you'd agree that a 1.7, properly driven and placed, can create a huge stereo 3D sound field that could shame many speakers. It's just that a few speakers can do better in this regard, though (usually) with either less strengths in other areas and/or at a higher cost. Like on most everything, there is always some type of tradeoff, as you we'll imply.

Besides, what are you leaving for the poor owners of 3.6/3.7 and the 20 series, which are 3-way! (LOL, at least my MMG's escape the "rule" and erase the walls for being 2-way, usually.)

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 13:10:31
Satie
Audiophile

Posts: 5426
Joined: July 6, 2002
 The point I am making is about how large a stereo field you can get - the stereo field is not the size of the soundstage or quality of imaging - but how much of the room has a clear stereo image. 3 way planars generally do not produce great soundstages and imaging outside the sweet spot.

The best stereo field size from a flat planar is obtained with a Rooze type setup bouncing the output off the sidewalls to create a strong stereo effect across most of the back of the room. You can comment on the drawbacks of image and soundstage quality at the sweet spot, but you can't deny that there are many great seating positions for the Rooze setup, where stereo imaging is good.

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 16:09:20
JBen
Audiophile

Posts: 3082
Location: South FL
Joined: May 18, 2008
Contributor
  Since: July 26, 2010
 Yes, Rooze offers many great seating positions where some impressive imaging can be found.

Yet, there is not in it a single place which reproduces what that "single best" position does so well in a proper "conventionally-positioned" planar pair. Admittedly, Rooze can more easily get good things done before we get to the damn hard Nirvana with the usual placements. And, one can actually place more people "in a good spot".

I also love that Rooze is a tremendous revelation for friends with some types of hearing impairment. Rooze allows them to understand that "soundstage" is a real perception, and accept that imaging is not a figment of other's imagination. In conventionally placed planars, this is much harder for them to get.

In fact, I keep Rooze in my "resource playbook" for when my time comes. LOL, last Friday that time seemed imminent. Wife insisted we went to see "John Wick 2" that evening. The outstanding theater sound was too loud in a half-empty hall. It forced me to cover my ears. Still, my ears hurt later...and I had tickets to the opera the following evening! It was a MAJOR relief that I could hear the singers distinctly in their positions on that stage. Well, Rooze may not easily deliver this kind of experience but it surely will get far closer than conventional when my time comes. But not yet, not yet.


 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 16:56:55
Satie
Audiophile

Posts: 5426
Joined: July 6, 2002
 Yes, the Rooze never quite gets the pinpoint thing going and depth is hit or miss, but I had a Focal Nova Utopia owner over (would you believe I know two of them and both share the same first name) while I had the Rooze setup. He had been trying to optimize their location to obtain the kind of soundstaging he was used to from his old ML Summits.

I played him Tchaikovskys Francesca De Remini (sp?) and some Liszt solo piano and back to Tchaikovsky tone poems (Tempest). The Rooze setup was not great for the piano which was oversized and imaged the depth of the sounding board out through the front wall, but the orchestral pieces got to him. Next time I heard from him he had chucked the Focals and got a new set of big MLs.

Good to know your hearing is intact. Hopefully mine will stay so as well. It would pretty much be the only thing that still works properly without assistance.

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 14, 2017 at 17:35:26
rosendds@frontiernet.net
Audiophile

Posts: 599
Location: North East
Joined: November 13, 2010
 Thanks for all fr all of the good information.Perhaps I expect too much.Tomorrow I will move the speakers separation distance to 70% of the distance to the sofa center seat.I'll toe them in so they cross at my feet at the center seat.

 

Different issue, but, posted on February 15, 2017 at 06:23:14
E-Stat
Audiophile

Posts: 37666
Joined: May 12, 2000
Contributor
  Since: April 5, 2002
 ...the speakers are pulled more than 1/2 way into the room.

nulls typically exist near the middle of rooms. My 26x16 area is sized similarly to yours. I placed my stats about 8' out from wall and listening position is at the other approximate third of the room. This I did using measurements for the most linear bass response.

I agree with others that perhaps you might need diffusion behind the speakers and more toe in for optimum imaging.

 

RE: Speaker Separation Distance, posted on February 15, 2017 at 11:47:36
Swamis Cat
Audiophile

Posts: 272
Location: Illinois
Joined: September 7, 2013
 With a wide speaker such as Maggies, isn't the relevant dimension the width of the tweeters from each other compared to the distance of the tweeters to the listener? This is especially critical considering there is a two to three foot difference in width just by changing from tweets in to tweets out, all else equal.

My experience is that the three series sounds best with the tweet-to-tweet distance somewhere around 78-85% of the tweet to ear distance. Again, it depends though, and I have found further apart (up to equilateral) works in some situations (especially if closer to the FW and bouncing a strongly reflected image). I have no experience with the 1.7 other than to say they are the best value for the money I have ever heard --phenomenal coherence!

Personally, I love the tone of Maggies with tweets out. I just wish it didn't put eighteen additional square feet of black monolith in the middle of my listening stage (compared to tweets in at the same geometry). Trade offs!

One other note, the 7 series is specifically designed to be played with the bass panels an inch or two closer to the listener than the tweeter. Wendell has confirmed this and it is readily apparent in the frequency response around the crossover area. This of course means the speaker will aim slightly ahead of the listener with tweets in and slightly behind tweets out. This leads to dramatically different amounts of optimal toe in, and the amount of toe in has dramatic differences on the bass and the sidewall reflections. More trade offs!

Other thoughts?

 

RE: Tchaikovsky's Francesca, etc., posted on February 15, 2017 at 16:30:25
JBen
Audiophile

Posts: 3082
Location: South FL
Joined: May 18, 2008
Contributor
  Since: July 26, 2010
 Satie, this posting of yours stroked two nerves, because of two items. The first one actually made me rush to Amazon to undo a "nostalgic" loss.

In all the years I spent in a music school and a couple later in conservatory, Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini escaped my attention. Then, one day in the mid 70's, while attending a Casals Festival concert, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich conducted a most passionate and mouth-watering rendition of some of Tchaikovsky's works. This included the overture to this symphonic work. It, and the whole concert, which included a Haydn cello concerto played by him, stuck to my heart. I even felt the urge to and did meet him in person at the time.

What I did not know then, and only learned decades later, was that this was among his first concerts after leaving the Soviet Union. No wonder the intensity! I did have a recording of the same work, later in his life, that impresses, though it lacks the same aura. Since I loaned the CD set and did not get them back, I just ordered an upcoming release of what looks like the same recordings (see below). Thanks for the reminder!

The other thing that came to mind is also, in part, related to Tchaikovsky. The opera I went to last weekend was Eugene Onegin. I was mighty pleased with the voices -- exquisite and precisely located on the stage. OTOH, I was furious that they mic'd the orchestra in the pit. An oboe five foot in diameter is not my recollection of real life. And I expect to hear the bass section mostly located where I am looking at it...and not at the other side of the hall. So, your comment about the piano size made me laugh.

 

RE: Tchaikovsky's Francesca, etc., posted on February 15, 2017 at 16:52:07
Satie
Audiophile

Posts: 5426
Joined: July 6, 2002
 That is a wonderful collection, isn't it Mono?

I played this version for my friend.

 

RE: Tchaikovsky's Francesca, etc., posted on February 15, 2017 at 17:13:40
rosendds@frontiernet.net
Audiophile

Posts: 599
Location: North East
Joined: November 13, 2010
 I moved my 1.7s in about 1' so now they are about 60% separated as the distance to the listening position.I toed them in so they cross about at my feet.I can say that I heard a big improvement in center sound stage as well as the perception that the sound stage extends out laterally beyond the speakers.My room is larger than I recalled.It is 30'9" and the speakers are pulled in 17' from the front wall.I have two M&K subs that are about 2' behind each panel.I'm looking forward to more listening Friday evening.

 

RE: Tchaikovsky's Francesca, etc., posted on February 15, 2017 at 23:34:49
JBen
Audiophile

Posts: 3082
Location: South FL
Joined: May 18, 2008
Contributor
  Since: July 26, 2010
 Yes, it is...well, if it turns out to be what I think it is. After posting, I found the original EMI issue but by that time, the order was already placed. And, for 19 bucks. The original is now $50. I'll take my chances.

It is stereo.

Yours looks appetizing...sent to "wish list" for later. Tks!

 

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