Typical dunce question here i am afraid,  In preparation for my beosound 9000 and beolab 6000's  arriving soon,  is there a minimum and maximum distance apart that these speakers should be sited?  Just trying to work out the best locations for them given that i will never have a "blank canvas" to work from,.  So best compromise to fit into an existing family home is sought !!

 

 

sandy

The speakers and your listening position should be at the corners of an equilateral triangle.

Not a dunce question at all!

Ideally, you should form an isosceles triangle with the loudspeakers, you should be sitting the same distance from each speaker, and the speakers should be as far apart as you are sat from them.

If one is placed in a corner, then ideally the other would be too so they both reproduce the same sound (if you place a speaker in a corner, you get more bass from that speaker).

There isn't really a 'maximum' distance they should be sited. Essentially you should be able to close your eyes and hear sound coming from exactly in between the two speakers (usually vocals) and other instruments appearing at different locations between the speakers.

Hope this helps, and enjoy the new system!

Did you pass your maths exam Alex?

Lots of articles on this subject - this is one.

However if you are married, and the room is your main living room, the best thing to do is ask the wife!

Obviously a dedicated listening room is the best idea, but at a guess, if you have bought Beolab 6000s, aesthetics and practical living feature in your life!  Try to avoid them being up against a wall and place them roughly equidistant from where you are going to be sitting. Once set up, play with moving them slightly and see how it affects the sound. This can make big differences. However the best advice is just to enjoy them!

joeyboygolf:

The speakers and your listening position should be at the corners of an equilateral triangle.

And if not possible, I'd always rather have the speakers closer to each other, than farther from this equation. Otherwise the soundstage seems to develop a "hole" in the middle.

Here in Finland, Tapio M Köykkä (50s-80s HiFi guru, discoverer of TIM distortion, etc) developed a system  to fight this phenomenon, called Ortoperspekta. It had a mono center channel with a bigger speaker, and smaller left and right channels which needed less power and got away with smaller satellite speakers (sound familiar, eh?). It was rather succesfull in the late 60s - 70s over here, but didn't get far elsewhere...

The connection to this forum might be, that B&O lost a law suit against Köykkä's patent on this system. I don't know the specifics, but it had to do with quadrophonic stereo.

-mika

 

The Beolab 5000 has the ability to power a centre speaker which is the sum of the right and left channel. They did a special control box to vary the output to the left and right speakers.

joeyboygolf:

Did you pass your maths exam Alex?

Mybad. I meant equilateral triangle ofc. I'm not exactly a mathematician, but that was just me being blonde for a moment...

Peter :

The Beolab 5000 has the ability to power a centre speaker which is the sum of the right and left channel. They did a special control box to vary the output to the left and right speakers.

This may have been the problem with the patent, then. Actually I didn't remember the principle of the Ortoperspekta system correctly - the satellite speakers aren't left and right, they are L-R and R-L. So in a mono recording they won't output anything. This patent was from 1965...

It actually sounds quite good, and the placement of the satellite speakers isn't critical at all compared to 2-channel stereo. Certainly worth trying if you can arrange the subtracted signals somehow.

-mika