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Why not ask Brian about his speaker design physics.

Posted by cheap-Jack (M) on March 13, 2007 at 08:33:06

In Reply to: Not always… posted by David Aiken on March 12, 2007 at 22:57:24:

Hi.

No musician wants to play the instrument inside a confined cubicle.
Why? Sound waves produced by the instrument, a violin or piano alike, got to radiate freely all over the place.

Reverse if also true: a loudspeaker is designed to reproduce the music produced by the musical instrument, & should be positioned in a way to allow sound waves radiated as unobstructed as possible.

Hence we have seen some hi-end speaker makers, like B&W, who have been building loudspeakers for decades with their flagship models all spherical shaped - to minimize unwanted deflection of the sound waves beaming out of the speaker box.

Speaker stand services at lease two purposes, IMO:-

(1) lift the speaker off the floor in minimize sound waves reflection immediately backup from the floor. Such deflection & reflection can ruin the loudspeakers' original designed frequency response, e.g. bass response. Hence we often find loudspeakers reproduce kinda better bass when placed directly on the floor.

Same idea applies when speakers are placed against the wall. The wall reflection changes the loudspeaker frequency response audibly.

(2) level up the tweeter of the loudspeaker which reproduces the high frequencies of the music signals, most directional to our aural perception, to our ear level to deliver the accurate soundstaging images.

Therefore the best way to position the loudspeakers should be, IMO, off the wall & off the floor (with an open-up base stand to set for our ears level) so that the orginal music reproduced would be not be distorted due to unwanted deflection & reflection.

My bookself speakers are placed 2.5 meters from the back wall & miniumn one metre from the side wall, on strong & massive steel tripod-shaped 20" off the floor. The idea is to minimize the unwanted side/back wall & floor reflection to ruin the response of the loudspeakers. Hence good sound.

One thing very crucial is: there is NOTHING repeat, nothing should be placed in between the two stereo loudspeakers.

Many like to place their audio racks in between the loudspeaker which obstruct the sound waves despersion big bigtime.

I bet you if you take out the loudspeakers away from all these in between sound reflective & deflective obstructions, the music will sound so much better, livelier & soundstage imaging more realistic.
This is exactly what I am doing now.

Same physics applies to floor standing speakers. Unless the loudspeakers are specifically designed with the box seated on the floor, I would lift them at least a few inches off the floor on brick or wooden footings so that there is free air flow through.
Such lifting off the floor also serves the purpose of eliminating floor vibration resonances backup to the loudspeaker.

c-J

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