Speaker Placement

Albert, I have had the same experience regarding back tilt with my CLS's as you have described with your U-1's. Verticle alignment appears to be critical in most esl's. Certainly in my case.

My CLS/SW800 combo is so good despite limited time for set up. But... get me a taller ceiling and I'll glomm on to a pair of A1's. The best speaker I've ever heard in the flesh.

But, I'm *not* suffering. Life is good.

Great idea Redkiwi, I've been experimenting with this for years. I currently own Thiel 3.6's. I have tried the Cardas rule but just usually experiment to dial in because my room is a little odd. It's a partially finished basement and measures 14.5W by 45L by 8H. My front wall is approx. 6 ft wide with 2 cavities on either side approx 5ft and 3 ft wide. My son's closet is on the other side and makes this identation into the room. It would be hard to dial in a rear firing speaker. Right now I have the speakers 48" off the front wall about 8.5ft apart which leaves my around 4 and 3 ft from side walls. I sit about 9 ft in front. Thiels have a wide dispersion so I don't usually toe-in although I play around with this it seems all the time - I can never be completely satisfied. I use a wool horse banket on the wall between the speakers and 2 on the side for damping, this seems to help imaging. Other than that damping material like foam seems to deaden the sound too much. My ceiling is unfinished - wood joists above me - don't know if this is good or bad or indifferent. Maybe defraction. Let me finish with a horror story, if you're quezy at all do not read on. Just yesterday I was fooling around and accidentally knocked over a sheet of drywall that was leaning up against an unfinished frame(STUPID IDIOT!) It fell into my speaker, tipped it over(GULP) it landed on my amp, fortunately on the face plate of my Classe, knocked the amp off the stand on its side, the speaker then rolled to a stop. Put a half inch gouge in the top right on the corner of the speaker (LOOKS REAL NICE). The place looked like a crime scene, cables everywhere - man. Well everything works or I would have crawled up on the roof to jump. Ever see the movie Jaws and Quin said the scariest moment of his life was waiting his turn to be pulled from the shark infested water, well mine was booting up waiting for the tubes to come on in the preamp to see if I could still produce music!

JD: Very nice post in a nutshell, which I made a hard copy of. I have a lense cleaning disc (that I have been afraid to use) that has white as well as pink noise tracks. Though I don't have a wide range of options as far as permanent placement of the speakers goes, it will be fun to play around with it (the white noise) as far as minor adjustments. Hopefully this will improve the sound in the casual listening area. If this shows positive results and doesn't drive me nuts I will then spring for the test disc that you refer to. I used pink noise generators years ago when setting up equalizers, but don't ever recall using or listening to white noise, other than when a television station went off the air.

Dekay, A friend of mine has a very casual set-up in that his wife seams to think speakers 4' into there 14' livingroom is too obtrusive. Chah Spouses. We worked with the white noise on his room and ended up with a speaker location that fit both the nodes and the spouse. It would not have been a set-up we would have ever tried without this process. Good luck!

Good news JD. My speakers have a tendency to "creep" if you know what I mean, and the soundstage just gets better and better.