monitor placement
 

Hello all

i got an empty room ( front wall height is 2.3m room is 3 meters wide and the lenght is 4.9 meters)

What is the best placement of monitors and the table..

I have read quite a lot, and i understand the best monitor position in this small'ish room is as close to front walls as posible ( i have a window in front wall)

How close? i will put acoustic treatment soon (bass traps in all 4 corners with air gaps, and first reflections and maybe the ceiling)

Regarding 38percent rule, my monitors is about 80-90cm away from the wall, so i have to move my listening position closer...

Yes i will buy sonarworks XREF20 mic and measure with REW

But for now im really interested in your opinions

Can you elaborate on this?

im no expert on acoustics, but after my research i found out that bet position to start is 38percent rule from front wall, so in this position my monitors is about less than a meter from front wall, now the best way to deal with SBIR in small room ( correct me if im wrong) is to move monitors as close to wall as posible, now in this position i have to move my desk closer as weal, in order to create somehow equal triangle, so this 38percent starting point is not going to work... or im missing something? Again im no expert, thats why im interested in other opinions

38% rule is about the listening position.
The speakers should be against the wall and flush mounting is prefered.
And beware of large tables to place the monitors on.

Mine are now 1-2 cm away from the wall. In that position, the 1-0-0 mode was excited even more than 15 cm away from the wall, but the other modes went down a bit. Since my 1-0-0 mode is at 32 Hz, I chose directly against the wall.

In other words, measure your room modes first. If your lowest mode is let's say 45 Hz which is in an ugly region, you may want to find a tradeoff between exciting that mode and exciting other modes.

Just my unqualified opinion.

What about treating your room modes and place your speakers to minimise Sbir ? It would be my approach kfhkh

Please read this:
Speaker placement methods

I believe it will be helpful.

hooppie

Treating room modes doesn't help too much SBIR minimization. Treating all walls/ceiling seriously, minimize SBIR, and already solve room modes in the process.

hooppie

We agree. Minimizing SBIR by placing speakers as close as possible to front wall which excites room modes which are treated is the best way to do. :)

There isnt a clear answer.

Opposed to common opinion I usually do not like the sound of speakers placed against the front wall. I compensate any low frequency "SBIR" as good as possible with a subwooofer. Even with front wall there is the ground and you cannot do anything against a reflection if you believe in SBIR for < 150 Hz (if such thing for those very low frequencies actually applies after room treatment) .

Example: place a Yamaha NS10 against front wall and the mids(!) will sound like ****. There is also the stereo image to account for. Optimizing the room for oneself without actually listening how it sounds (especially the stereo image) is not very clever.

I don't believe that for a 5 inch or 6 inch speaker, the front wall has no negative influence on the speaker aiming to be an ideal point source.

In addition, the table has a very strong impact on the sound. How deep is your table? If might wanto to avoid any table altogether (for example, mixing everything ITB), your sound might be be better. In my current room, sound, especially from 900 Hz and up, was better WITHOUT a table. Depends on what is the goal (mastering desk with lots of hardware?). If that is a production room a simple keyboard stand for the controller keyboard and a second, upper space for a laptop or computer monitor is often the most acoustically transparent solution, not interfering with the high frequencies from the monitors (and sometimes less problematic for low frequencies as well). Table looks good on a studio photo, seems "mandatory".

Cheers

the question is What is the best placement of monitors and the table..

The question of preferences (in opposition with the state of the art in audio pro) have no place here.

the worst exemple: the ns10 was designed for to be place in corner, listen at 3/4 meters in a living room.

so the speakers against the short wall as far as possible of the corner to begin.

Maybe he hasn't still decided IF he wants to place a table.

You read my posting and understood nothing.

Sorry, wrong :). Nobody places them into corners. The speaker still works well. The console helps to get some bass back, at 100 Hz. Another example how important measuring WITH the console is, not only in an empty room and decide about things which may be different WITH the console.

https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net...ry/n/ns10m.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_NS-10
Bookshelf speaker is not a speaker with wide stereo width, it is not designed for that. Do you have NS10? I have a pair and experience for more than 10 years. You believe "pro audio" and acoustics have nothing in common? There are other aspects than looking merely at the bass response, apparently completely ignored here. It is to have a speaker approaching a point source of sound. I rather have absorbers behind the speaker (if not mounted in the wall) than to have the speaker near the wall, unless the chassey is big.

Floyd Toole Sound Reproduction : Loudspeakers and Rooms page 411.

A gift for you.

https://we.riseup.net/assets/443799/...loyd+Toole.pdf

The Klipsch KlipscHorn also.


How do you manage the electronic comb filtering due to summation stereo mono on the sub ?

As Bert, Johann, JayPee, dinococcus, and Boggy have all pointed out, quite correctly, there's a simple system for setting up the speakers and listening position in rooms, based on the principles of acoustics and simple geometry, plus actual measurement with REW. There are very good reasons for their recommendations and comments, which are totally right.

With the speakers against the front wall, you force the initial SBIR dip up to a higher frequency, in the bottom end of the mid range, where it is not so objectionable and can be treated. If you have the speakers away from the front wall, then that first SBIR dip occurs down lower, in the low end. The further you move the speakers from the wall, the lower the frequency is, and that's a problem: it will be very much more noticeable, and very much harder to treat, acoustically. Using a single sub to "fix" SBIR brings in a bunch of other problems. If you have lots of money to play with, then setting up two (or four.. or more) subs in a plane wave bass array can be quiet effective at dealing with several low-end issues at once. But that's not so easy to do... and it is expensive, since you need multiple subs.

On the other hand, the "floor bounce" is very different, and not so much of an issue to start with! It might look ugly on your REW graphs, but it isn't usually noticeable, for several reasons: first, your brain expects it, and "tunes it out", second, it's usually a very narrow dip, and third there's no "ringing" involved. All of those make it sort of "invisible". Some folks from Genelec did a survey of many dozens of high-end control rooms a few years back, and the floor bounce issue is clearly evident in pretty much all of them. It's a fact of life: there will be a floor bounce in your room, and treating it is somewhere between "really really hard" and "impossible". So don't sweat the floor bounce. SBIR is a real issue. Modal ringing is a real issue. Symmetry is a real issue. Decay times are real issues. The floor bounce is "real" too, but not worth worrying about too much.

About your desk: It can be an issue yes, which is why you'll often see recommendations to make the desk as small as you can, and as "open" as you can, in the sense of not having lots of large, solid surfaces that could cause reflections or other issues. Some people even tilt the desk surface slightly. Most set the desktop level as low as possible, to minimize the effects of the desk. With careful planning and design, you can have a desk that does not cause major issues.

- Stuart -

Any chance to get this paper? freshflowe

I'd add that, speakers positioning depends highly on the room (assuming we talk about small acoustic spaces here)

Distance between your 2 speakers and 'speaker L to back of your head' is dictated by the length of your room.

Since you don't want to have your head inn a null relative to length axis, don't want your speakers in a peak or null relative to width axis...same for height!

EBU Tech. 3276 recommends 1.20m above the floor. But don't do it if the height of the room is 2m40!


Of course, the more you treat the room, the less problem you'll have.

They are just starting point. No rules! kfhkh

It is not narrow at all. What a bad excuse. What most people do is to find the position where your monitors perform best ;). And this is not always near the wall. Because every room taken as it is is quite different. Sometimes you can compensate one problem with another, as long as the resulting frequency reponse is as flat as possible. So the optimum is just "somehwere". And if you believe that this subforum represents the entire rest of the world and its practise then sorry. It is just some common divisor of a few very active users.

Thank you so much. So what do you believe does the author actually prove or explain? The story about NS10s delivering constant power to a more distant sound field is quite interesting for sure. The author misses several points:

- The NS10s as intended were poorely received, thats a fact. What about the idea that placing them so near to the wall did no good to the midrange? As I said, they sound like **** near the wall.

- No graph is given for their placement near the wall.

- The author didn't have the idea that the typical console placement changes the frequency response to the better. "Familiarity" alone won't explain it.

- The NS10s as the Auratones are closed cabinet designs with a very fast transient response and short decay time. Have you ever heard how a snare drum sounds through an Auratone (or Behritone), how punchy? Did the author mention anything about this?

Not sure what you are talking about. Do you mean to sum the L and R signal to a MID signal for bass? You can't have it all. You CAN buy a second subwoofer although my table would not allow to "see" both of them.

I use a second pair of speakers without sub and headphones if there is any problem with phase issues left and right in the bass department. Usually sub bass will be panned mono anyway, anything else is not recommended.

Are you looking for a guru audiophile post?

I give you more insight, maybe I can open up your way of seeing things:

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussio...-close-to-wall

I was just looking if anyone would have a similar experience as I do.

If you are a mixing engineer you might see things very different and make different decisions because you understand the importance of stereo imaging. Having a setup with very good sound stage helps you to make a 3D mix compared to flat one-dimensional mixes.

Try this link
https://www.genelec.com/sites/defaul...virta_anet.pdf

The steteo imaging is the result of the interaction between the "the reflection" and the speakers by the good dosage.

The EBU 3276 document write - 10 dB if i remember well, not - 20 (like this is promoted here) or - 50 dB.

So what's new?

Nothing new.

The "stereo image" is the image information in the recording, the recorded reflections of sound sources, their panning position and their depth position. It should not be interrupted by the ERs of the listening room.

-10 dB alone introduces a ripple of 5.6 dB. Wanna hide behind some rather dated recommendation?

Put your speakers outside and search the stereo picture.
After Toole, now is the ebu 3276 who are stupid.

This time of push the ignored button.

The title is "A Survey Study Of In-Situ Stereo And Multi-Channel Monitoring Conditions", the authors are "Aki V. Mäkivirta and Christophe Anet", and it was presented in one of the AES conventions. You might be able to find it on their website. Google can probably help. They tested 372 speakers in 164 professional control rooms, around the world, with several very interesting conclusions...

If you can't find it, then PM me... :)


- Stuart -

Thank you Stuart. This one of the documents that should be much more well known, if not an informal sticky.

GS at its best! Thank you! kfhkh

Genelec is nothing like NRC for ease of access to documents. But still awkward. Here is the document.