Speaker Placement for Best Sound Quality

Most people when placing new speakers, simply choose the most convenient spot or wherever they look the best aesthetically. If you're more concerned about sound quality and fidelity there are some guidelines to follow to ensure the sound hitting your ears is a true representation of what is coming out of your speakers.

First up is to determine how far apart they should be. This is assuming you have a standard 2.0 or 2.1 stereo setup with two main speakers. In this configuration, sound that is identical in both speakers creates a phantom center, basically the sound that seems to come from directly in front of you. The sound that is different in each speaker creates the stereo field, or the sound that seem to come from either side and all around you. The distance between the speakers will affect the balance between the phantom center and the stereo field. Too close together and they'll sound mono, with no stereo component. But too far away and the center will be too quiet and lose impact.

A good rule of thumb here is to place the speakers the same distance apart as the distance between each speaker and your ears. In other words the two speakers and your listening position should form a perfect equilateral triangle. If you usually sit 3 feet away from your speakers, the speakers should be 3 feet apart. You can also angle them inwards (called toe-in) so that they're pointing at you. Experiment to find the best angle between pointing straight out and straight at you. In terms of speaker height, you should try to align the tweeters with your ear height.

Now where in the room should they be placed? Reflections from your room make up a large portion of the sound you hear, and waves bouncing back off of walls and your ceiling and floor can combine with the direct signal and cause cancellation. Ideally you'd be listening in a treated studio with sound absorbing panels placed at strategic spots. However there are some things you can do in terms of speaker placement that can help reduce these reflections. If your room is rectangle shaped, try to point the speakers at the wall furthest away. You want your sound travelling lengthwise, as this gives it the most distance to travel before it reflects off a wall. The speakers themselves should be away from the wall as well. If possible keep them a foot away to minimize reflections that bounce off the back wall and recombine with the direct signal.

Another big thing to watch out for is corners. Keep your speakers away from those nasty corners! Bass has a habit of building up where walls meet and this causes a very muddy signal. Try turning up your stereo and standing in a corner. You'll hear a lot of bass reflections which will reduce clarity and turn your sound to mush. In pro studios they have specially made panels for the corners called bass traps which attempt to minimize this effect.

Vibrations don't just travel through the air, they can also travel through surfaces. If you have speakers sitting on a table for instance, vibrations can travel through the speaker enclosure and into the surface of the table. The material and density of the surface will affect which frequencies will be affected. You can minimize this by decoupling the speakers from the surface with foam pads (there are a few companies on the market making specialty products for this purpose) or some other material that absorbs vibrations. Also consider moving them to a different surface to see if the sound quality improves.

As with all things in the audio world, the ideal setup requires a lot of experimenting. Hopefully these guidelines will give you a place to start and prevent you from making some of the big mistakes. If you remedy some of these problems in your listening environment you could hear a significant improvement and start noticing things you had never picked up before in your favorite music and movies.