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Placement for Varying
Listening Positions
If you want the freedom to sit anywhere in
a room facing any direction, and/or find
that you prefer the “all around you” sound
of some car stereos to a conventional
“sound stage” facing you, consider the
speaker placement techniques professional
installers use in restaurants and bars. They
place speakers in an array around the
listening area, so that the music is always
surrounding you, regardless of the direc-
tion you face.
The rule of thumb is to add one pair of
loudspeakers for every 100 to 200 square
feet of listening area. Curiously, this is not
so that you can play the music louder, but
so that you can play it softer! When you
have only one pair of loudspeakers in a
large room you will notice that when the
sound is perfect in one part of the room, it
is too loud near the speakers. By placing
more than one pair in the room you will
avoid these “hot spots” of loud sound and
you will create more sonic ambiance
while maintaining clarity and a rich sound
everywhere
(See Figure 5).
You can make the listener position less
critical by using mono rather than stereo.
This can be difficult to achieve with
normal stereo amplifiers. However, Niles
manufactures Systems Integration
Amplifiers
®
which enable one room to be
wired in stereo while other rooms are
wired in mono! Consult your local Niles
dealer for more information.
In smaller rooms or rooms that are infre-
quently used, you typically can’t justify the
expense of more than two loudspeakers.
Try to bracket the room with the two
speakers. Diagonal placement is a very
effective way to stretch the coverage pat-
tern of two speakers. You can also com-
promise between direct sound (for detail
and clarity) and reflected sound (the ambi-
ent or “all around you” effect). The loud-
speakers can be placed near corners to
create more reflected sound. By directing
the tweeters to point away from the listen-
er, so they create as much reflected sound
as possible, you emphasize the ambient
effect. The more reflected sound there is in
the room the stronger the ambient effect at
low volumes. You should use moderation,
however, otherwise the compromise
becomes too one sided and at high vol-
umes, the sound will be blurred and less
distinct.
Placement for Home Theater
Rear Applications
In a home theater, the goal is to reproduce
the experience of a great movie theater in
our homes. The biggest difference between
the two is the rear or surround loudspeaker
array in a commercial theater. Here, it is
not uncommon to see twenty or thirty
loudspeakers around the audience. This
huge array of speakers assures that you will
feel completely surrounded by the ambient
soundtrack of the movie. Film makers try
to use the “surround” soundtrack to enve-
lope you in the environment on screen.
They will place background music, rain
sounds, traffic noise, etc. on the “surround”
soundtrack. In a home with a single pair of
loudspeakers it is easy for the jungle
sounds to sound like they are “in the mid-
dle of your head” just like headphones!
A single pair of DS8.3 and DS8.5
Loudspeakers, properly placed, can create
a very convincing simulation of an array
of loudspeakers. If you place them near a
hard reflecting surface you can make one
pair of loudspeakers sound like several.
Create as many reflections as possible by
placing the loudspeakers near a corner so
that the adjoining walls will act as a pow
-
erful reflecto
r
. Direct the tweeters so that
sound is pointed away form the listener
creating still more reflections and thus
7
Speaker Placement