Spire Home Theater Placement Question

Hello All,

I'm in the middle of converting a room in my house into a home theater using ML components (Spires, Motif, Fresco i's, Depth i).

I just read in the Spire manual that, "your sitting distance should be further than the distance between the speakers themselves" and, "if the distance from the listener to the speakers becomes smaller than the distance between the speakers themselves, the image will no longer focus in the center."

This has got me a little concerned. My room that I'm designing is wider than it is deep, and if I pull my Spires out from the front and side walls walls like I should (3 feet front / 2 feet sides), they are about 12.5 feet apart and about 10.5 - 12.0 feet from the listening area (closer at the sides, farthest at the center listening position).

If I push them back to 2 feet from the front wall then I'm at 11.5 - 13.0 feet from the listening area, but that's still marginal from the jist of the manual. It will also start to toe them into the desk they sit on the sides of... not good.

I'm wondering if this is going to seriously impact my ability to have good imaging in the room. Any thoughts? Attached is a very rough Sketchup shot of the room so you have an idea of what the setup is like.

Thanks for any help.

What you have diagrammed there is a recipe for poor sound in my opinion. First of all, the speakers are too far apart. Six to eight feet apart is acceptable in that size room. Ten to Twelve feet is just too much. Also, that beast of a desk/cabinet in between your speakers is going to hurt your sound. With that setup, I expect you will get very poor imaging and soundstaging. I hope you are planning on lots of acoustic treatments.

What would be useful is an estimation of the ideal ratio of distance between speakers to distance to seating. Rich, you recommend six to eight feet apart for my seating distance of (average) 11 feet. So perhaps 7:11 is good you say, and my room as designed would be about 12.5:11, or very poor.

Probably the best I can do is get it down to 10:12 unless I knock out the back wall (which is a room length walk in closet). I do plan on lots of acoustic treatments (including inside the walls, floor, and ceiling). The desk has to remain however (although I can build it somewhat smaller) as the room is a combination office / home theater.

Thanks again for the help...

bradchatellier said:

Attached is a very rough Sketchup shot of the room so you have an idea of what the setup is like.

Click to expand...

Rough?? Hell you even got the shadows from the sunlight coming through the window in that diagram.:bowdown:

Here's a couple of previous links about sitting position and placement.
http://www.martinloganowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2815&highlight=triangle
http://www.martinloganowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3620&highlight=triangle


Every room is different and reacts different, But in a greement with Rich. Speakers to far apart and the desk to big.

I'm wondering if you can put the desk and multiple monitors on the back wall / in the full length closet? You could then close off the "office" with bi/tri fold doors with slats to act as a type of diffuser. Moving the office to the closet would open your front for better positioning.

Gordon

Thanks for those links... I'm feeling much better now. An equilateral triangle or a little bit better I can do. The desk has to stay where it is as the television also functions as a 4th monitor. There is always the chance I will elect to knock down the back wall (which adds another five feet... room is currently 15' 8" wide, 13' 9" deep), to allow more room in front and back of the seating area.

Good post, I will be facing the same problem when my Spires come in two weeks. So I figure I will break the rules and see how it sounds and basically use trial and error, until it sounds good. But I do have more lead way then you because I can bring the Spires closer if needed. But I was not sure if 6 or 8 feet are too close. Good Luck!!

Brad,

For the sake of all that is holy... do not build that room like you drew it. As Rich said, that is a recipe for pi$$ poor sound and disappointment. Even the most brilliant room treatments may not be able to save that layout. You have spent the monies and time to acquire state of the art equipment.... please go back to your drawing board and find a better solution.

It would be better for you to back up that couch to the wall, after treating the entire surface behind the ears with traps, than botch the geometry like you have drawn.

Make it sound good, then worry about the Feng Shue, curb appeal, or whatever...

My 2 cents.

~VDR

VanDaRo... it is very difficult for me to digest advice that says, "do not build that room like you drew it" or, "make it sound good" but provides few suggestions (other than backing the couch up, etc.) on how to make it better. Any suggestions on improving it rather than just canning it?

If anyone out there thinks my room would sound better with my current $250 Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 system, please just tell me and I'll call it quits tonight...

Perhaps I should clarify what I'm looking for here, since I'm receiving a lot of negative commentary. Having a desk in the front of the room is non-negotiable, although I can shrink it down from 11'0" (as shown in the picture above) to 9'4" which will leave about 10 feet between the speakers. If I push the seats to the back wall they will be about 13 feet from the speakers. At 10:13 this is more than the equilateral triangle that some ML owners found acceptable in the linked threads above, so I'm not sure what the problem is here... (please elaborate)

Many home theater rooms have entertainment cabinets in the middle of the front wall, so since my desk is basically just a wide entertainment cabinet, will someone tell me for the sake of all that is holy, "How far would I have to push the seats back so that speakers 10 feet apart sound good?!?"

Like I said, it is possible that I could knock down the back wall if I had to which would increase the room depth to 18'10".

Any advice on how to make this design work, instead of canning it, or at least WHY it won't work as designed would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks.

okay to start with, how about a desk that doesn't create a solid wall between the two speakers - one without drawers under it? just 4 legs and a large flat surface. a few nice looking file cab's against the side walls or back corners to make up for the lost drawers? you could also play with the width of the desk which would allow you to bring the speakers closer together.

It's been said before on this forum, but bears repeating. The less "stuff" you have jutting out into your room between the speakers, the better. The desk you have is a beast; it makes me wonder if such a thing is required for 3 monitors and a wall-hanging LCD/Plasma. Would a 6-footer do just as well???

If the desk is to be used as a storage area for the HiFi gear, consider moving the equipment rack elsewhere to shorten the desks' length. This would require long interconnects or speaker cables, but that really isn't a big deal given the capabilities of today's gear -- I recommend long ICs and short speaker wire, but many will disagree, particularly if your preamp is a wimp. Experiment with loaner wires and tell us what you think !!!

I like the 7:10 ratio that you quoted earlier... If you can achieve this, you will be much happier. And ultimately this is about your satisfaction. Being a HiFi junkie is not a destination, it is a journey. Enjoy it !!

~VDR

Side note- how did you make that? Is that a computer program?

Okay, this is good info, thanks. Bear with me but I'm going to ask a couple of blasphemous questions, just for perspective (remember, I'm a newb):

1) If I reduced the desk to 9'4" but otherwise kept it as is, would I get a better sound if I went with another, non-ML, non electrostat type speaker?

2) Given the same situation, what if I just went with wall mounted speakers, either ML or other?

I'm not saying I won't change the desk design completely, but I need to understand the situation from a number of different angles first. Thanks for the help.


Nik- The program is Google's Sketchup: http://sketchup.google.com/. It's free and it's badassed...

If you hard set on that configuration, well good luck. You mentioned that you have seen many equipment racks between the speakers. Yes, but they all compromise the sound. I have a rack between my speakers and had to move the speakers well into the room to get the best sound and the system still doesn't sound as good as when the rack is elsewhere.

We all know that compromise is necessary. My opinion is that given that big desk and the other things that are non-negotiable, you shouldn't waste your money. It is probably best to get a Bose system or some such and put the excess funds in the bank. I am not trying to be funny here.

If you are going to spend the money, you should consult someone who can give you advice on both sound and home arrangement. We have all seen those TV programs where someone remodels all or part of the house. It just may take another set of eyes.

First of all, the size and shape of the room have much more to do with proper speaker placement than anything else. You must get your speakers a certain distance out from the side walls and the front wall to get them to sound their best. You must have a reasonable distance between them in relation to their distance to the listener in order for them to sound their best. You must have a minimal amount of cabinetry in between them in order for them to sound their best. These concepts hold true for any speaker in any room.

Here are a few links to help you with speaker placement:

Link

Link

A quote from that last link is particularly applicable to your situation:

"I don't like excessive physical separation: if you sit 12 feet back from your speakers, try separating the two main speakers about 6 to 8 feet.
. . .
If you separate front speakers by more than 10 feet, it's often difficult to achieve an unbroken front soundstage."

Good luck with it.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Let me make sure I've got this straight: If I elect to have a 9 foot desk on my front wall, and assuming I'm sitting 13 feet back from speakers that are 10 feet apart (and about three feet out from the front and side walls), a Bose system will sound better than the Martin Logan system I've described? Do we have a consensus??

Rich- Thanks for the links... good stuff.

Just curious, do you already HAVE this desk? If not, you might conceivably get a 6 foot desk, with a separate ROLLING file cabinet (or two), which you can move out of the way for serious listening. I would also suggest pulling the Spires out farther from the wall, and add some acoustic panels behind them. In fact, if you are having the desk custom-built, you could even attach some 2-4" custom absorption panels to the rolling files, and rotate them 90 or 180 degrees for use as acoustic treatments!

bradchatellier said:

a Bose system will sound better than the Martin Logan system I've described?

Click to expand...

I don't think that's what robertawillisjr was saying. I'm pretty sure he was suggesting that your room has a lot issues that are going to prevent speakers costing several thousand dollars (ML or any other speakers) from sounding their best, so why spend several thousand dollars on your speakers? Of course the ML system you've described is going to sound better then a Bose system but is it going to sound $7,000 or $8,000 better? Maybe not...

-steve

bradchatellier said:

Let me make sure I've got this straight: If I elect to have a 9 foot desk on my front wall, and assuming I'm sitting 13 feet back from speakers that are 10 feet apart (and about three feet out from the front and side walls), a Bose system will sound better than the Martin Logan system I've described? Do we have a consensus??

Click to expand...

It is not that the bose system would necessarily sound better than the ML system. Any speaker system you place in this layout will have issues that hamper its performance. It's just that ML's, being hybrid electrostatic dipolar speakers, are very sensitive to placement in order to sound their best and the cost to their performance will be more noticeable than with a cheap system.

Just as you wouldn't necessarily want to spend the money on a Porsche if you could never drive it over 55 mph, just as you wouldn't want to spend the money on a Rolex if you just needed a running watch, what some of us are saying is that given your constraints, you are not going to get the Martin Logan speakers to sound anywhere near as good as they are capable and you may not want to invest the money in that high end of a setup. Especially if it is just for home theater.

A few things to ponder in relation to your diagram. If you have the speakers placed as you do in the diagram, you will have to toe them in much more than you show there in order to achieve proper imaging and soundstaging, (which will be difficult to achieve anyway with your speakers that far apart). Unfortunately, when you toe them in that much in that position, the rear wave of the dipolar speaker will bounce off of the side wall first, then the rear wall, then the other side wall and hit your ear from the opposite side that it is supposed to (normally it would bounce of the rear wall first, then the side wall and then your ear on the same side as the speaker that it came from). This will have a big impact on muddying your soundstage and imaging. No, I don't think that is worded strongly enough. This will destroy your soundstage and imaging. And this is not even beginning to take into account the big desk in between the speakers and what effect that has (which is considerable).

Also, if your speakers are equidistant from the rear and side walls (3 ft) then your woofers are more likely to excite certain nodes due to boundary reflection issues, resulting in bass problems. You will be more likely to experience a horn effect on your bass from the corner of the room and bass reverberation at certain frequencies.

So I guess what we are saying is that your plan leaves too little flexibility for proper positioning of these speakers and if you are familiar with how they are capable of sounding, then you will be less than pleased with the results for how much money you spend on the speakers. Thus, for this particular application, it may make sense to go with a cheaper speaker to get decent home theater sound. It still won't be great, but then you won't have spent thousands of dollars on it either.

If you are determined to go with MLs in this setup, I think you will either just be satisfied to have less-than-stellar sound, or you will have to spend upwards of two to three thousand dollars on room treatments, which will help you somewhat with these issues.