- I'm Jason.
Product Manager at Kanto Audio.
And today I'm gonna be talking about speaker placement.
Now finding the right place in your room
for your speakers is critical to get the best performance
from your speakers.
Just like waves in an ocean,
sound waves interact in your room,
increase in intensity in certain areas
and decrease intensity and other areas.
So you owe it to yourself to find a place in your room
where your speakers and room work harmoniously
and you got the most even frequency response.
So there's four steps we're gonna be doing
in order to get your speaker set up perfectly.
We're gonna be first determining the height
that your speakers need to be on.
Then we're gonna be determining where your speakers
and seeing positioning to be in the room
or then it could determine how wide the speakers need to be.
And then we're gonna actually listen
to the speakers and make some final tweaks.
So let's get into it.
The first thing that we're gonna do
is determine our speakers height.
Now this is important
because speakers disperse pretty well horizontally
but not that well vertically.
So getting your speakers lined up with your ears
is gonna ensure that your speaker doesn't sound muffled
or rolled off.
So I'm gonna grab a piece of tape and the tape measure,
and we're gonna use these tools
to determine our speakers height.
I'm gonna take the piece of tape
and I'm gonna put it at 42 inches from the floor.
'Cause that's a pretty good approximation
of where your eyes sit When you're seated.
Now we're gonna take a seat in our chair
and we're gonna look at that piece of tape.
And we're gonna determine if it needs to go a little higher
or a little lower.
So in this case my eyesight sits a little bit lower
than the piece of tape.
So I'm gonna go ahead and move it down a bit.
Now, once I've done that,
I can take the measurement from the tweeter
to the bottom of the speaker and deducted from that height.
So this is nine inches.
And this is 41 inches.
So 41 minus nine gets you 32 inches.
And we just so happen to have our speakers set
up on 32 inch speakers downs.
Now I recommend speaker stands
because you're gonna be moving your speakers around
during this process.
And you're gonna want a dedicated piece of furniture
to move around on.
It's very unlikely that your bookshelf
or the piece of furniture in your living room
is the best place for your speaker.
The next step is determining where our speakers
and our seating position needs to be in the room.
We're gonna be using the rule of thirds.
We're gonna be placing our speakers
one-third from the front wall
and our seating position one third from the rear wall.
I've already measured this room.
It's 15 feet.
I've already placed my seating position five feet
from the rear wall.
And we're gonna be placing our speakers five feet
on the front wall.
So five feet is about right here.
And at this point,
don't worry about how wide the speakers are apart.
We're gonna figure that out in the next step.
And we realized that you might not be able
to pull the setup off in your own home.
It's pretty far away from the wall
but the worst place to put your seating position
or your speaker is right against the wall
or in the middle of the room.
So try as best you can to get your seating position
and your speakers away from them walls.
The next step, step three,
is determining how wide the speakers need to be
apart from each other.
Now we're gonna use the equal lateral triangle theory.
We're gonna place ourselves at one point
of equal lateral triangle in our seat.
And the other two points are speakers.
So we're gonna take a seat and measure our speaker
and determine how wide it used to be from there.
So this speaker, is about 56 inches away from myself.
I'm gonna move the speakers apart 56 inches.
I'm just gonna eye-ball it first
and I'll take a measurement,
see what adjustments I need to make.
Bang on.
Now that you've move your speakers apart,
you might find one of them is really close to a sidewall.
If that's the case,
you're gonna wanna add a little bit of diffusion
beside your speaker.
We've used a bookshelf here
but anything that diffuses sound like some plants,
or some books or a stack of vinyl
will work perfectly.
You wanna avoid a situation where your speaker
is reflecting off a hard surface
because it'll reduce sound quality.
The last step is to actually listen to the speakers
and start making some adjustments.
Everything that we've done up to this point
it's just getting an estimate of where the speakers
need to be.
So the first thing we're gonna listen to is base response.
So ideally you want your base in your room to be even.
You don't want certain frequencies
or certain notes to be louder than others.
So we're gonna take a seat
and we're gonna listen to some base heavy music.
We've created a playlist of some music
that we like to use when we're testing base.
And you can find that in the description below.
So start playing your song and pay attention
to how even the base is.
You don't wanna pick a track
that has a bunch of different bass notes,
I want something that has a monotonous baseline.
(upbeat music)
So I'm finding that certain frequencies
sound a little bit louder than other frequencies.
So I'm gonna move the speakers back a little bit
and then give it another listen.
So I'm gonna move it back about four inches or so.
(upbeat music)
And just with that small amount of adjustment
I'm noticing the bases is a little bit smoother.
It's not quite there.
So I could probably go a little bit further.
Just keep going back and forth, listening to music
and moving the speakers back until you get a nice,
even, baseline response.
The next thing we're gonna listen for is imaging.
Imaging is essentially like the depth of the music.
When your speakers are set up properly,
it'll sound like their sounds
that are coming from behind the speaker
and sounds that are coming up a little bit forward.
So to test imaging, we're gonna listen
to a vocal heavy track.
And we're gonna want to pick something
that has vocals right in the center of the mix.
So start playing some music
and pay attention to it vocal sound like
they're sitting directly in between your speaker.
(singing in a foreign language)
I'm finding that the vocals don't sound perfectly
pin to the center.
So I'm gonna tow my speakers in just a little bit
and see if it improves a little.
(singing in a foreign language)
And just that little adjustment has made the vocals
pinned directly in the center.
Sounds a lot better now.
There are certain circumstances
in which your speakers might sound really good
just facing towards yourself with no (indistinct).
Some speakers are really good off access
and they sound pretty good wherever you said,
but you might have to justice a few times to get perfect.
And if you're in a situation where your speaker
is really close to a sidewall,
you're probably gonna have to tow your speaker in a bit more
to avoid that reflection we were talking earlier.
(upbeat music)
Now at this point, your speakers should be 90% set up
but there are a couple extra tweaks you can do
to make it sound even better.
One of the things you can do is listening
for mid base response.
So that's essentially where kick drums
and low male vocal set.
If you find
that those frequencies are a little bit overwhelming
you can pull your speakers apart.
And if you find that a little bit lacking
you can move your speakers together.
And the last week that you can do is improving soundstage.
Soundstage is the width of your music.
So if you're finding like you have good imaging
but your stereo width is a little bit narrow
it doesn't sound like there's sounds coming
beyond the speakers.
You can put a little bit of diffusion behind the speaker.
So same thing, bookshelf, plants, books, vinyl,
anything like that will work.
After watching this tutorial,
I hope your speakers are dialed in and sounding perfect.
If you liked this video
and you want to see more tips and tricks
check out our YouTube channel and make sure to subscribe.
I'm Jason from Kanto Audio.
Thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)