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REAL SOUND: We are going to talk about hooking up front speakers and moving them around, but first, I want to talk about real sound. This may seem simplistic, but sending and receiving sounds happens where our heads are. We send sound by speaking or singing, or playing instruments that are usually very close to our heads--like violins, flutes, or trumpets. We never send or receive sound with our heads on a bookshelf! That colors the sound. Prove it by sticking your head into a shelf and speaking. You can repeat the test with your head in a corner, on the floor, or up at the ceiling. Real sound happens in free space, at a height between sitting and standing. When a recording engineer wants to make the most believable recording he can, he uses a mike on a tall stand, in free air! Now we have our model...
All we have to do is treat our speakers like humans and they might be able to sound more like humans--speaking, singing, or playing music.
SET UP: Where do we place front left and right speakers in our listening room? And where do we place the listener? First, we treat the speakers like real musicians... Pretend there are four of them. They sit or stand in free air in front of you. Simple. Our satellite speakers are small, light and easy to move around to an ideal position that real musicians might occupy. However, it's not so easy to place two full-size speakers in an ideal location to create a sound stage. They are bulky and often require a large stand. Once they are in a good sound stage position, the bass response may not be satisfactory due to standing waves in the room.
MOVING THE BASS: Room response curves from high quality speakers are usually smooth at mid and high frequencies, but get very rough as the wave lengths and the room dimensions become similar. For example, a 100 Hz sound wave is 11 feet long--an average room dimension. With a separate subwoofer, you can move the bass to get the smoothest low frequency response. You can't do this with two big speaker boxes, but you can easily move the subwoofer while the two satellites maintain the selected sound stage.
So where do you place the SUBWOOFER? Most people have been told you can place the sub anywhere in the room. This is not true. It makes the salesman's job easier, but it is not true. The sub needs to be with the other speakers at a similar distance from the listener. (Fortunately, because of the long wave lengths involved, the sub doesn't have to be up in the air like the satellites.) It might be between the two satellites, or near the left or right one. Try what's easy first, then experiment for the most even response.
PLACING THE SATELLITES Now that you understand the goals of good speaker placement, where do you really put the satellites in your room? Place them at least a foot from a back wall, and at least three feet from a side wall. Aim them towards the listener. If you are ten feet from the satellites, place them ten feet apart... Make an equilateral triangle.
PLACEMENT OPTION: More often than not, you can get good results by placing the satellites in front of adjacent walls, rather than the same wall, so as to get as far as possible from the reflections of the side walls. This makes for automatic toe-in. The listener will be facing into a corner, a good place for the sub and/or the very bulky television set.
BIG REAL SOUND: Our customers often marvel at the large sound stage a TOBY Stereo or theater system can generate. Here's my response: The reproduced sound can seem big if the REAL SOUND was BIG. Although the satellites can sound much bigger than they look, they are much bigger than the microphones! This sounds like a joke, but the mikes and the speakers have to do the same job. The mikes must capture the REAL SOUND and the speakers must restore it. The speakers can't add or subtract anything, or they will sound their own size and their own position.
Don't accept that compromise! GO for the closest you can get to REAL SOUND!