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RE: how about flipping the speakers 360 degrees around

Posted by David Aiken (A) on August 25, 2009 at 18:36:59

In Reply to: RE: how about flipping the speakers 360 degrees around posted by Patster on August 25, 2009 at 17:16:59:

The basic consensus is that if you're going to have the ceiling low at one end of the room and high at the other, it's best to have it low at the speaker end. That's with a sloping ceiling becuase having the ceiling slope up to the rear can result in eliminating the first ceiling reflection.

In your case you've got a flat ceiling with several steps. I'd rather have the low steps in front of me than behind me because of the chance of creating a fairly early, and therefore strong, reflection from behind with sound striking the front of one of the steps, reflecting up to the ceiling and then back forward to the listening position. Whether or not this would happen will depend on speaker and listening position placement relative to the various steps in the ceiling. On the other hand, I could also run the argument that it's better to have those steps behind me since our hearing isn't as good on direction to the rear as it is to the front so messy reflections from the rear may do less harm than messy reflections from the front.

The fact is that the room is so complex in shape, and so asymmetrical, that no one is going to be able to predict how it will sound with the setup reversed. The only way to find out is to try it and see which you prefer but, as I said previously, in an asymmetric room my best advice is to go for a setup that keeps the speakers and listening position as far from reflective surfaces as possible and which also keeps the direct path as short as possible and the paths of the first reflections as long as possible relative to the length of the direct path. That kind of setup minimises room effects as much as possible and that makes any remaining problems easier to deal with.


David Aiken

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