How To Setup Your Speakers

I wanted to share with you part of an excellent speaker setup guide created by Nordost several years ago. I hope  you will find this to be helpful in optimizing speakers in your room.

As many of you already know, the positioning of your loudspeakers in relation to the wall can have a significant  effect on the speakers’ performance. For example, speakers placed with a close proximity to the wall tend to register as “bass-heavy”.  

In order to find the best positioning for your listening room, you can use a technique called “voicing the room”. Essentially, this tests the acoustics of the space. Standing with your back to the far wall behind your speakers, simply start  speaking in a loud, even voice while taking small steps into the center of the  room. Once you have found a spot in the room where your voice takes on a natural quality, mark it with your masking tape and continue to advance until your voice begins to lose that characteristic.

Continue the same process, now starting at the side wall, and walk towards the center of your initial marks. Once finished, you should have a squared off area. You will place your speaker a third of the way into this area. This should be repeated on the opposite side of the room for the second speaker.  

Once you have placed your speakers, it is now time to  determine your “sweet spot”. In order to do this, imagine that  your speakers and “sweet spot” make a triangle. You can use  your tape measure to find the vertex where the legs  extending from both speakers converge. As a starting point,  your sweet spot is the same distance in front of your  speakers as the distance between them.  

I hope this was helpful. If you have questions please reach out.

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