Long wall or short wall


Right now I have a pair of Aerial 10T's positioned on the short wall of my listening room. (the room is approx. 16' x 22') I read alot that people actually place their speakers on the long wall. Which is better and why? I am thinking of selling them to buy a pair of Vandersteen 5A's. Would the same apply?
Thanks
zippyyd7ab
Long wall placement has a LOT of advantages so long as you can maintain a decent distance between you / the speakers / back wall. Here's the first and primary reason why this is true.

When you have your speakers placed on the short wall, nothing you can do can increase the distance from the speaker to the side wall. Since there is a short path to the side wall from the speaker, you end up with more reflections coming back to you at a higher intensity that are closer in arrival time to that of the primary wave. Do you want to fathom a guess as to what this does to frequency response and the soundstage / imaging ?

Placing the speakers further from the side wall, you have a longer path to the point of reflection. Not only have the intensity of these signals been reduced, but they are now at a much softer angle. In effect, the reflections are reduced in quantity, intensity and less concentrated towards your seated listening position. On top of this, the arrival times from these reflections are spread much further apart from the primary signals that you've heard, minimizing their effects.

If you really want to get into it, short wall / long wall placements require different types of room treatments in terms of diffraction and / or absorption. To take that a step further and really get into specifics, this will vary according to the radiation pattern of the speakers too. This is why, and i've stated this MANY, MANY times, there are no "universal formulas" that work when it comes to the room acoustics / speaker placement for an individual room / installation. The thing that comes closest in terms of "universal recommendations for speaker placement" is the program called "Computer Aided Room Acoustics" aka " CARA", but even that is only as good as the specific data that you program into into it. Sean
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PS... I've been an advocate of long wall placement for quite some time, long before i understood room acoustics. I followed what my ears told me and theories that i learned later verified what i was hearing. As a side note, long wall placement is not as critical with smaller speakers, especially those that have acoustic treatments on the baffle.
Zippy,
Recommendation:
On the long wall, but the front of the woofer is at 1/2 the distance into the room. i.e. you woofer would be at 8'
Place each 5.5ft from the side walls.
Locate your seat AT the rear wall, at mid-point (11ft)
You'll have to play with the toe-in to see what sounds best...start with the drivers pointing slightly behind each year and adjust from there.
LEAN forward and BACKWARD from your seating position and notice the difference in the imaging and bass.
Adjust to taste!
This takes the side wall reflections pretty much out of the equation and also being on the rear wall (boundary) will smooth out the bass.
Give it a try while you are playing with some of the other configurations.
Anybody else ever used this config? Comments if so?
Happy Listening!
I agree with Sean's comments on Cara. For the price I have found it to be a very useful tool. I do have limitations with placement of speakers in my listening room due to a pool table at one end of the room. There are still many choices left for me and I have explored each with Cara and found that for each location Cara did find the best starting point placement for each speaker. Usually a staggard placement I would never have though of. Just to echo Sean's comments, Cara is a very good mathematical modeling tool. But all model goes-outs are subject to the goes-ins.

All of that being said, Cara can't listen for you. I have found that in my room a more conventional setup has worked best so far. I believe it is because of the 7' from each side wall to each speaker and also because of the softening of the 1st reflecting point waves.

I guess what I am saying is that long wall and short wall are relative terms when you take into account the magnitude of each measurement. For instance, in my case it could be said that I listen on the short wall but the width of this short wall allows me to reap the same benefits as long wall listeners.

And don't discount the imaging capabilities of the 10t's. They do require alot of power. I'm feeding mine 300wpc and have been advised by some that they need 400+ to really sing.
Audio Physics is also a big proponent of long wall placement. I had my Virgo's placed this way years ago. Now I have my Watt/Puppy's in pretty much the same config. Check out my pics in systems.

FYI: http://www.audiophysic.de/info/aufstellung/e_index.html
I have always used 'short wall' setups in the different rooms I had, but I have no philisophical problems with the other setup.

I have the CARA CD too. Rives audio has some helpful setup info at their website. Check out http://www.rivesaudio.com if you want to try it.

I do disagree with the suggestion of pulling the speaker 1/2 way out into the room. I can't imagine a speaker or a room in which this would be a rational solution.

If you can do it, play with placement and see what you think.