A Tweak That Works

The audiophile world is awash in tweaks—devices, techniques, gizmos, and practices that promise to improve the sound of one’s system. Their efficacy is hotly debated and may be in fact one of the hottest topics around audiophile-dom, right up there with vinyl-vs.-digital and tube-vs.-solid-state. Some tweaks border on the surreal, such as applying a color to the outside rim of a compact disc, placing stones strategically on the top surfaces of various components, and the like. Some cost next to nothing, others are phenomenally expensive. Many of them have snake oil written all over them.

It isn’t really correct of me to think of speaker positioning as a tweak, because it’s an essential. All that time spent researching one’s speakers, auditioning them, finally straining one’s bank account (and possibly floor foundations) to acquire the absolute best pair for your needs, and then just plopping them into your living room—how sad.

You might think that apart from really gross errors (say, just sticking them wherever you’ve got room) speaker positioning would result in only modest gains, but in fact the change can be dramatic to the point of sounding as though you’ve replaced the speakers altogether, or even your entire system. Even a shift of an inch here or there, or the slightest re-angling, can wreak spectacularly audible changes, either for the better or for the worse.

And that isn’t restricted to high-end speakers by any means. A pair of el-cheapo computer speakers can display an astonishing variety of personalities depending on their placement relative to the listener.

The basics are simple: the listener sits at, or just outside of, the apex of an equilateral triangle with the two speakers making up the two other points. Such positioning will generally result in an excellent stereo separation, without the acoustic dead spot in the center that develops if the speakers are too far apart. The soundstage—i.e., the sense of not only width but depth—should be clear with such positioning.

However, a number of other factors come into play, the most critical of which is the room itself. Very few of us have dedicated listening rooms that are ideal for speaker placement. The audio system is in our living room or the family room or whatnot. Speakers interact with the room in ways both subtle and obvious. Just as a bone-dry recital hall can make a Hamburg Steinway sound like a tinny box, a wacky room acoustic combined with poor speaker placement can make a superlative speaker sound mushy, or shrill, or boomy, or thin. (Conversely, proper placement can make a modest speaker bloom into something remarkable.)

When I first set up Fasolt and Fafner, the B&W 803D speakers in my living room, my triangle was a bit flattened off the equilateral—the speakers were farther apart than each speaker’s distance from me. But it was working quite well, with an excellent width of soundstage and a rock-solid center. But while the separation, soundstage, and depth were all quite acceptable, the bass was distinctly out of control. The speakers weren’t all that far from the back or side walls, and that can result in the bass becoming wildly amplified by the room. Given that Fasolt and Fafner are massive speakers with triple woofers and a bass-enhancing flowport, sufficient bass is simply not going to be an issue under any circumstances.

I began to feel uncomfortable with the sheer amount, and impact, of the bass I was hearing. A double-bass in the orchestra would play a pizzicato and the side wall of my living room would shiver. While that much bass can be fun for a while, it isn’t at all realistic and wearies the ear dreadfully. I wasn’t getting the clarity I wanted, either, and I knew that was the room as well, and not the speakers. B&W 803D speakers have tweeters made from vapor-deposited diamond, and they produce highs gloriously well. B&W 800-series speakers are designed to sound as natural and pure as possible; that’s why they’re so often the first choice for monitors in fine recording studios such as London’s Abbey Road.

In case you’re wondering: yes you could just turn the bass control down on the amplifier. However, that doesn’t really work well—you still get all that extra unwanted bass bouncing around the room, except that it’s a bit quieter. And I really don’t like jiggering the sound within the system to make up for room problems unless that’s really the only possible solution; if the speakers aren’t receiving an unsullied audio signal, then their ability to sing out is compromised.

So I got back to work on positioning, following the guidelines in Robert Harley’s The Complete Guide to High-End Audio. Acknowledging from the outset that I wouldn’t be able to achieve absolutely optimal positioning—there just isn’t enough room to place the speakers a minimum of three feet away from side and back walls—I started with a simple technique. I attached a piece of string just a bit to the front of my normal listening position, and then stretched the string to one of the speakers. Having gotten the string length, I cut the string at that point and used it to measure the distance from my listening position to the other speaker. Then I used the string to measure the distance between the two speakers.

By using that measurement, I found that the speakers really needed to be closer together—i.e., away from the side walls. The problem is exacerbated a bit in my living room by a protruding fireplace along the left side, which creates a deflecting surface in front of the left speaker and mashes in the left of the soundstage.

After that, trial and error. Toe-in (how much the speaker is angled towards you) can have a strong impact on the stereo staging, or the perceived width of the sound. But the depth of the soundstage may suffer if the speakers are toed in too much.

Twist speaker a tiny bit to the right, return to listening position, listen for a bit, jump up again and twist back or more or what not. Repeat. Hard on the rug, hard on the feet, extremely irritating to my cat April who was trying to concentrate on her nap.

But my biggest challenge was in taming that boomy bass. A slight change in toe-in and it would boom; moving the right speaker in particular seemed to have the most dramatic effect in that direction.

What I eventually discovered was that a direct toe-in—i.e., with the speakers staring right at me—worked best, and by bringing Fasolt (the left speaker) a just a tiny bit farther away from the back wall I was able to compensate for the tendency of my fireplace to mash in the left of the soundstage.

It doesn’t look as good as my original placement, because the speakers are now located more in the room rather than along the sides, but that’s an acceptable tradeoff. After all, I use my living room almost entirely for listening.

So I think I’ve got it now. The bass boom is gone, and a sparkling clarity has emerged. The soundstage is wide and the feeling of depth is solid. I even went so far as to write all my distances and toe-ins down precisely, should I need to move the speakers around for some reason.