Toe-over vs toe-in

[Bevensee]

I have started experimenting with toe-over in stead of toe-in. By toe-over, I mean toeing the speakers in so far that they cross in from rather than behind the seating position. The idea comes from this article: Setup of WG Speakers.pdf (libinst.com). Initial results seem fine. When sitting off-center (e.g. in one end of a three-seater) the image shifts much less to the nearest speaker since I am listening to the furthest away speaker on-axis and the nearest is around 25 degrees off-axis. In the center position, the image seems considerably narrower than when speakers are set up the conventional way. It only extends to the speakers but not beyond them. I compensated a bit by moving them a bit further apart. On the other hand, the center image gained solidity. I will keep it like this for a few weeks, then revert back for a few weeks before I draw final conclusions. The trend now is that I will keep them like this for normal use when we are more people using the living and for movies and TV. But for me-time alone with music, I might turn them out to get that larger-than-life soundstage back. At least for large scale music, arena-rock, symphonic, opera, big-band, etc. For small-scale music like chamber music, jazz, blues, non-arena rock etc. I might stay with the toe-over.

Have anyone else tried this? What do you think of it? Oh, and pardon the ironing board in the corner.

 

[MOON]

Funny you should mention this. I am experimenting with toe in now and will report back. I put tape on the floor where the Odyssey's were initially. I have a 2 person couch at the listening position so I am not right in the center, just off to the side. I will experiment too with the listening distance to the speaker.

My friend has his Odyssey's with quite a toe in and they sound fantastic. If you ran a yard stick from the inside front of his speakers straight back the measurement from the inside back of the speaker to the yard stick is 9 inches. Are your speakers 11A's ?

 

[Bevensee]

It seems to be a bit of a balancing act. Too much toe-over, and the sound gets congested. Now I have them so that I can just see the outside of the bass-box. That seems to work fine. There's a handball match on the telly tonight. That will be a good test for wide seating with ambient hall sound overlaid by - hopefully centerlocked commentators.

 

[ttocs]

I use what I've called "extreme toe-in" for well over a year and love it! I've posted about that elsewhere so I won't repeat much, but the soundstage is great, the sound is life-like, and the sweet spot is wider. The speakers' toe haven't changed since. For viewing movies from the 3 main seats, the 2 outer seats aren't left with hearing only "that" speaker and not much from the other.

As mentioned elsewhere the last couple days, I came upon this arrangement after watching a video about speaker setup while using Jennifer Warnes' Ballad Of The Runaway Horse, and taking a few days moving the speakers in all manners of positions and orientations.

So I'm a big fan of experimentation to find out what works in each setup! It's free!

 

[Bevensee]

I have now been using this "toe-over" for some days. Watching normal TV, sports, drama ad action movies. I've listened to a wide range of music, including Handel's Mesias and Concerto Grossos, Bachs Christmas Oratory, Beethoven Sonatas for Cello and piano, Holst 'The Planets, Bob Dynal 'Tempest', Ghost's live album (forgot the name), Ton Morello, Duke Garwood, Daft Punk, Marianne Faithful, Iron Maiden, Sharon Van Etten and many others. For me, this extreme toe-in works exceptionally well. Image and tonal balance is more stable. Sweetspot is much wider (middle seat in the three-seater is of cause still best, but now the outer seats are very good as well). The center "ghost image" is incredibly solid - almost "reach out and touch" - like.

An added bonus is that the distance form the panels to the front wall effectively has increased since the rear wave now beam at an angle. Similarly, the wall behind the listening position is not nearly as audible. Previously, I would often place a cushion behind my head to damp the reflection from the hard wall behind my head. Now I don't. I think angled reflections are a huge benefit in smaller rooms because of this. The rear wave and the reflected front wave don't bounce back and forth between front and rear wall. They are diffused so they add to the ambience instead of creating annoying flutter echoes.

I strongly encourage anyone with Logans in limited space to try it out!

 

[spkrdctr]

I have the ESL's in a medium sized room and use extreme toe in. It really "fixed" my speakers ability to get a stereo center for singers etc. I have them set so a single vocalists sings at the location of my TV, which is between the speakers. After I set the Left and Right ESL's then I set the other speakers and tweaked the receiver delays and such so that I get great movie/TV watching and then I switch my receiver (Yamaha) to music mode, I get great music in stereo or surround. Once I went to extreme toe in it all fell into place.