Thiel Owners

Tom,

Thanks so much for weighing in.  I do enjoy a listening height of 3', which I noticed from your earlier posts is a critical factor in finding the sweet spot.  It also makes complete sense that there are many variables at play that have a greater impact on sound than focusing on precise placements.  But as you well know, we love to get lost in the details!  And with so much out there about distance from the walls, the listening position, and each speaker (including 3 full pages with 5 diagrams that Jim dedicated to it in my 3.7 manual), I just couldn't resist asking what people think the norm is (so thanks as well for mentioning you measure from the tweeter/midrange).  

Room treatments is probably my biggest missing element.  Presently I have an "acoustifuser" panel on my wall behind the listening spot that I purchased from Next Generation Acoustics, but nothing else to speak of besides some well position furniture and window shades.  Part of the issue is aesthetics (yes, it's a weakness), but it also is another rabbit hole that I fear I'll never get out of.  Of course, that also is where the fun lies..

I can offer what I find to be nearly ideal for my 2.4 listening position/setup.  Speakers 8' apart center-to-center, toed-in 10 degrees each or less, grilles on.  9.5' coax to my ear.  38" listening height.  I use the coax as my reference point as that defines the source of the most-directional sound and imaging and phase information comes from when making small adjustments to position.

But I've used the spikes to tilt the speakers back an unspecified amount, a little bit because my ear is 2" higher than design, but mostly due to having more vertical latitude for frequency balance.  Stereophile's vertical response graphs illustrate (though perhaps at too close a distance) that response above the coax axis sucks-out the lower-mids, and below the coax further fills-in the lower-mids.  So even if I give up some degree of time/phase coherency by tilting the speaker further back (altering arrival times ever-so-slightly from spec) I get more wiggle-room before midrange suck-out.

Additionally, each speaker is pretty much in free-space,  6' from cabinet edges to either side wall and 3' to a 'soft' back wall, 6' to a 'hard' back wall.  Nothing at all diffractory around the speakers or between the speakers and my ears, or even to the sides, after a little living room tweakage for a proper listening session, ie move the coffee table behind the speakers rather than right in front of the couch. 

A thick pile carpet, soft cushy furniture against the back wall, and an 8'x2' acoustical absorber behind the couch/listening positions.

RTA shows a lumpy low-frequency response due to my open floor plan asymmetrical living room (though this also puts 25Hz at 0dB ref 1kHz!), but otherwise lets the Thiels be Thiels with as little room interference as possible.  So I'm fortunate my current living space allows for such a great setup for any speaker to sound their best.

dhoff01

I try to measure everything from or to the tweeter on my 2.7s ,
speakers are 8ft apart and 8ft 6 inches from my ears
31 inches from front wall and 32 inches from side wall 
with 1/2 inch toe in .
Listening height is 36 inches .

I just recently moved the speakers 6 inches further away and reduced the toe in by 1 inch after changing speaker cables  to take advantage 
of the improved depth and sound staging .



 

Good stuff guys. Thanks for chiming in.

sdecker- instead of tilting the speakers, have you tried raising them altogether by a couple of inches so you can also maintain time/phase coherency? Or is there another disadvantage to doing it this way? Just curious..

I also find it interesting that you both toe in and you keep your speakers positioned equidistant in the corners. I prefer not to toe in mine, as I find it takes away from the width of the soundstage, but that’s just my personal preference. I also always heard that you shouldn’t place your speakers at the same distances to the side and back walls, but always questioned whether this was truly required when considering speaker placement.

dhoff01: raising the speakers 2" on the spikes, if they could go up that high, would be precarious and less-stable.  Not that sound travels this way, but putting a laser pointer atop the speaker and raising the front spikes 1" up moves the laser pointer up 8" at my 9' listening distance.  I'm doing this to manage a taller vertical listening window w/o suckout, even though I'm sure it takes a very small hit in overall coherency.  The tiny amount of potential phase shift from this is still far better than every non-time-aligned speaker out there!

Regarding the positioning, a lot of it is a function of living room WAF symmetry.  But the walls to the side and rear are so far away from the speaker boundaries, I can't believe they play a role at these distances, especially because none of them are 'true' walls in my open floor plan.

If my toe-in was any less, it wouldn't be visible.  It was from putzing with speaker width apart vs soundstage breadth vs HF balance.  If I went from <10 deg toe-in to zero, the effect would be minimal for sure.  But after 15 years of tweaking these speakers to this acoustic, I can now notice ridiculously small changes.  So rather than obsess about it, I take the time to find a reasonable compromise and let them sit in that position for years :-)