Speakers are a must-have for your entertainment center. It is worth spending some time to place them properly and increase the pleasure of listening to music or watching movies.
The proper placement of speakers in your home has a significant impact on the level of your entertainment. It is an issue that should be approached in a thoughtful manner so that you can avoid the most common mistakes and fully enjoy your favorite movies and music.
There are many factors to consider when preparing your home theater; even the best equipment will not sound as it should if you place it in the wrong place. The first thing to consider is whether the speakers will be placed in a straight line, across or diagonally. The type of speakers themselves is also an important consideration – the individual units need to be properly matched to the arrangement.
When you have higher-end equipment or want to get the most out of your speakers, you can also enlist the help of professionals. Sound optimization is not a simple task – to deal with it in the right way, we need to have extensive knowledge of acoustics. However, such a service can cost a lot, so at the beginning it is worth to get acquainted with a few most important rules, which will help us to set up the speakers on our own.
One of the most important things is to make sure that all speakers in a given part of the set are at the same height. Even small differences can cause improper overlapping of sound waves, resulting in interference and unclear, polluted sound.
Some equipment comes with a platform designed to be placed on the floor. These are the so-called floor-standing speakers – in this case, it is advisable to stay with the manufacturer’s intention and not to place them on elevations or furniture. When it comes to speakers placed on pillars, it is a good idea to place them at two different ends of the room. This way we will be able to get a more spacious sound and enjoy even better sound.
One of the most common and effective methods is to place speakers in an equilateral triangle, with one of its vertices as the listening position. When using this solution, the distance between the individual elements of the set should be between 1.8 and 2.5 meters. However, it is not always possible to place speakers in such a way – if your apartment is not big enough, there is nothing to prevent you from slightly reducing the distance
The speakers themselves should be aimed directly at the listener. The space between them should also be free of other objects or plants whose surface will reflect sound waves.
It is also worth remembering to keep a certain distance from the walls. This is an important rule, but it should be noted right away that it does not have to be applied absolutely. Some speakers on the market are designed so that they can be placed right next to vertical surfaces. This information can often be found in the instructions for the device
Most often, a distance of at least 60 centimeters from the sides of the speaker and 30 centimeters from the back wall is recommended. However, the exact placement depends largely on the available space – if we have a larger room, nothing stands in the way of placing the speakers at a distance of up to one meter from the walls. This way we can avoid inappropriate sound propagation in the room. This is an issue that is particularly important in the case of bass.
If we remember about basic rules, speaker placement should not pose many problems. The most important issues, which we should take into account, are the height of the elements of the set, as well as the distance both from the walls and from other speakers. Avoid placing the equipment in corners and adjust the power to the size of the room. With a proper configuration, we can get rid of interference and the characteristic “buzzing”, which disturbs watching favorite movies or listening to music.
