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Room Acoustics Forum by Rives Audio

Woofer Height

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Hi:

I have a room that is approximately 11 1/2' X 13 1/2', with a 9' ceiling. I am going to purchase some speaker stands, and I have a question: Is there an optimal distance from the center of the woofer to the floor? I estimate that the speakers will be about 3' from the rear wall, and 2' from the side wall to the center of the woofers, and my listening position will be about 8' away.

Thanks!

Follow Ups:

RE: Woofer Height - David Aiken 13:43:11 09/06/10 (0)
Proximity to the floor will provide additional support for the woofer but tweeter height tends to be important also because it often tends to be the determining factor for the best on axis response for the speaker overall.

Many people suggest that the tweeter should be placed at ear height but while that works for some speakers, it doesn't for others. Dynaudios, for example, use first order crossovers and that places the best listening angle at a 15 degree angle from the tweeter on the mid driver side. Until a few years ago Dynaudio placed the tweeter above the mid so you needed to have the tweeter above ear height for best response but then they started placing the tweeter low, below the mid, so that you need to have the tweeter below ear height in order to get the best on axis response. Other crossover types affect the speaker's radiation pattern in other ways.

With woofer height, best results are probably going to occur when the speaker is at the height the designer intended. With floorstanders that's going to be using the supplied spikes/footers. With standmounts it's going to be with the speaker on stands the same height as the designer used. Sometimes the manufacturer makes stand height recommendations (you can contact them and ask if it isn't in a manual or instruction sheet supplied with the speakers) and sometimes they also make stands to go with the speaker in which case stands of similar height are likely to be best. You may have to consider stands a little higher or lower if you use noticeably higher or lower seating than is usual in most living rooms.

You can experiment with placing standmounts extremely low and tilting them back a lot so that the tweeter is aimed at your ears or a bit above/below them and see how that works. You'll get more bass reinforcement than you would with a stand but you'll also probably change the tonal balance a lot as well which may or may not coincide with your preferences. Mapleshade make a couple of very low speaker stands for standmounts based on this approach.

David Aiken

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