Guys,explain this please

[Yiangos]

Hi there

I have 2 questions.The first one is about speaker positioning.I've read that a good place to start is to position the speakers one third of the length of the room from the front wall and sit one third of the length of the room from the rear wall.That is easily to comprehent but the articles continue to say if that is not possible,use one fifth.What does that mean?Should i place the speakers
one fifth from the front wall,sit one fifth from the rear wall and leave a distabce of three fifths between me and loudspeakers? it is not very important to me as i am quite happy with the positioning of my loudspeakers but hey,perhaps one day i'll experiment.
My second question is about the sound of my system.I am not gonna go into details about my system since i believe is not relevant but here's what's bothering me.When i listen to my system using the turntable the sound is absolutely marvelous but when i listen to cds,the sound is not that good.I find it lacking in dynamics and i can't turn the volume up as i do with the turntable because the sounds tend to harden up and this happens with all the digital sources i have (Pioneer dvd 989 , denon dvd a1 xva , cary Audio 306 , Theta jade/Audio synthesis DAX Decade etc) Is this normal or i'm used to the analoque sound and find everything else to sound like crap ?:lolsign:

[Macca]

or i'm used to the analoque sound and find everything else to sound like crap ?:lolsign:

That's pretty much your answer right there IMHO:)

[keiths]

I've read that a good place to start is to position the speakers one third of the length of the room from the front wall and sit one third of the length of the room from the rear wall.

Personally, I'd take all these speaker positioning 'rules' with a pinch of salt. There are just too many factors (size and shape of room, construction, furnishings, loudspeaker type etc.) that determine the 'best' speaker and listening positions within any given room.

[Welder]

Why do I think this is a pro analogue wind up :rolleyes: ;)

[MartinT]

There are no rules, Yiangos. Some say to make an equilateral triangle with the two speakers and yourself, but I prefer to throw across the short length of the room even if that makes me a little close to form an equilateral triangle. I also like the speakers toed-in so that they are almost, but not quite, facing me. Others prefer them firing straight.

It's too dependent on your room, speakers and listening position so you need to experiment.

As for analogue sounding better than digital, that could be your equipment bias but I would suggest it also says something about the quality of analogue recordings.

[technobear]

Why do I think this is a pro analogue wind up :rolleyes: ;)

Perhaps because you are mistaken?

Too many modern CDs have all the dynamics squeezed out of them in an attempt to make them sound louder than everybody else.

Too many modern CDs have digital clipping.

Too many modern CDs are badly distorted because the music was recorded on someone's Mac without any heed paid to sound quality.

This phenomenon has been going on for a good 15 years now and has got steadily worse.

I've stopped buying anything on CD from the last 10 years unless I hear it first as I have had so many now which I have ended up chucking in the bin as they are too painful to listen to.

[WAD62]

This phenomenon has been going on for a good 15 years now and has got steadily worse.

I've stopped buying anything on CD from the last 10 years unless I hear it first as I have had so many now which I have ended up chucking in the bin as they are too painful to listen to.

Are you saying that this phenomenon is restricted to CDs of the last 15 years, or are the vinyl equivalents subject to the same issues...:scratch:

I would have thought that the same master would be used for each...

P.S. Longitudinally along the room, 2 foot from back wall, equilateral triangle, slightly toed in, and my DAC sounds much better than my turntable...;)

[technobear]

I would have thought that the same master would be used for each...


Anecdotal evidence would suggest this is not the case.

There are of course a lot of bad CD players out there and price is not any kind of an indication of which ones get it right.

[DSJR]

When you turn the sound up it hardens - sounds like a severely clipping amp to me :)

GOOD digital thrills in a similar way to good analogue and if you work at it, you can get both to inform and entertain in equal measure. My take is that if one os so much better it makes the other un-listenable, then there's something severely wrong with the system - and not just setup either..

When I got my Micro-Seiki CD player in 1994, it showed up things wrong in the turntable I was using (actually a sharp treble rise in the cartridge I was using after my decca went wrong). Once I'd found a suitable compromise, the CD player was sounding a bit weak, so I had a clock upgrade done which lifted it well clear of the turntable, and so on. Eventually, I was able to settle back and enjoy both and now I have the Decca repaired and sounding gorgeous again, I'm a VERY happy bunny, now with two systems :eek:


Back to the original question. I was taught this by Steve Boxhall (late of his Cambridge dealership and possibly late of KJ too ). Stand near the wall you wish to place your speakers near and "[I]dum-be-dum" to yourself while shuffling back away from it. Once your "dum-de-dum" stops the booming sound you hear when too close to the wall, is a good place to put your speakers in the first instance. After that it's fine tuning. This sounds really stupid, but it works every time :lol:

[serendipitydawg]

Isn't the golden rule; "There are no golden rules."

[The Vinyl Adventure]

My speakers came with instructions to make an equilateral triangle and have them tied in to the point of facing me front on ... I ignored it thinking inwas clever ... Turns out Adam know how to make their speakers sound best!
They are now 6" from the wall at the sides and back at the nearest corner, which ever typing it sounds like a terrible place for them to be... They sound fine!
They sounded slightly better with a meter between then and the sides and a foot at the backs, but didn't have quite as good a sound stage for some reason ... Too close together maybe?
Just mess about until it sounds right ... But if you have instructions from the people who make them it might just e worth giving that a go ... Although I'm guessing that following instructions doesn't work more than it does in most cases!!
My turntable sounds different to my streamer ... I like them both for different reasons!

[Rare Bird]

Hamish:
I am clever i take no notice of all that BS, straight on looks neat & uniform, thats how they stay, they are ornaments at the end of the day :eyebrows:

[jimdgoulding]

Google Cardas and at his website he provides a calculator. Use modest toe-in and an equilateral triangle for starters. Scooting your chair back will yield more of an in room presence but will narrow the stage (ok for studio recordings) while the former will yield a larger and more dimensional stage better for classical recordings made on location.

[Alan]

I favour a nearfield setup, with my speakers further apart then the distance to me (by about double actually). They are also about 2 1/2 feet from the wall as they are quite strong in the bass.

This might seem crazy, but it more or less follows the instructions I received from the designer, and I have a soundstage larger than I have ever heard elsewhere with no hole in the middle.

It may seem odd, but try it and see. As has been said, there are no rules really, as most rooms have unique problems to present. You need ears and music, not a meter or calculator, imo of course.

[Alan]

Oh, and on analogue/digital I think the new generation DACs have addressed the gap. You still need a really good transport and this is usually easier and cheaper to acheive through a computer. Digital doesnt have to be analogues poor cousin.

also imo!

[Andy]

Back to the original question. I was taught this by Steve Boxhall (late of his Cambridge dealership and possibly late of KJ too ). Stand near the wall you wish to place your speakers near and "[I]dum-be-dum" to yourself while shuffling back away from it. Once your "dum-de-dum" stops the booming sound you hear when too close to the wall, is a good place to put your speakers in the first instance. After that it's fine tuning. This sounds really stupid, but it works every time :lol:

Re speaker positioning
I dont know where I got this from, but I've always done this, and yes it really does work. (Also succeeds in making you feel very very stupid:lolsign:).
Once you've done that, experiment with the positioning of your chair. Sometimes dead centre isnt always the sweet spot (eg you may have one bare wall one side and a settee and a wall hanging the other, so that will affect your best position). Also, experiment with the position of other furniture too.
For various reasons, for years I've had my kit in the bedroom, but after much rearrangement of furniture and equipment (always best to rearrange your equipment in the bedroom I'm told :)) I had a good musical sound with excellent imaging that was, by common consensus, surprisingly better than what would have been expected.
Also, I'd always preferred toed-in speakers (for the image more than the sound quality), but found that firing straight ahead worked better in the bedroom.
As for vinyl v cd, no competition - using kit of equal value, vinyl always sounds better to my ears, more dynamic and musical. Only when you shell out significantly more for equipment does cd come close or better vinyl. It's probably something to do with that old argument over whether clipping off the tops of sound waves to digitise them has any effect. In my opinion it does (though others dont share that view). The whole thing is made worse these days by compressed production techniques - compare a cd from the 80's with (say) a Japanese re-pressing of the same cd and there is a lack of dynamic range in the new cd and a loss of musicality.
And just to be contentious, I'd say it goes to prove that the music industry doesn't care about music. What the music industry cares about is the profit and anything that contributes to the profit. Nothing else matters. Oops, rant over ;)
Good luck with your experimenting Yiangos :)