I've been watching most of your videos over the past year+. This video is one of the most helpful I've seen because of the amount of detail in which you answer the question and provide additional advice for. Thanks

Thanks for your comments. I would say that all of this often misses the point of the consumer, so starting on positioning, many audiophiles usually drag the topic to to full room treatment. Yes. there is an ideal setup in which there is a room "dedicated" to audio. Think about a studio or an auditorium for speakers. You can have the speakers at an ideal position, throw in absorbers, diffusers etc, take measurements, have an ideal seating distance, listen at higher volumes, simply perfection. Then.. there is the living room. Everything is there, it is a home you share, there might be neighbors. Speakers arrive and the way you have arranged your living kind of dictates where the speakers should be. In this situation the room treatment is limited to curtains and a carpet perhaps. Just place your speakers, put them closer to the wall if that is what brings out certain personal preferences and pull them from the wall for the same personal reasons. Audio science and living rooms rarely add up in practical sense. Not to put aside that some living rooms sound great due to the way they are accidentally stuffed by items that help to reduce reverb. People with a cozy taste usually have an advantage above people who prefer sterile decoration (small bookshelves work around like a wonder in those, Bose anyone ;) ) But still leaps away from utopia. In other words, the average living rooms and auditoriums are a totally different ball game and that is not a problem. Just enjoy :)

Great topic. Context is sooo important! Always in my consultations I give the rough frame of the story before giving a certain advise. All the possible advise you can give is so much dependent on so many influencing factors.

Thank you so much! Love your channel and all the information given throughout this video, big up! 🔥

I love this take! I also have been going crazy trying to balance, the 38% rule, my monitors manual suggestions, and the room modes in my room and that dang equilateral triangle. In the end I have this feeling I have sacrificed my stereo image and my hunch is that my bass response could be more accurate if I sat further back than 38 percent and widened my monitors. I think that will be my next experiment. Acoustics will make you lose sleep, but your take is refreshing and liberating.

Thanks Jesco, I've followed your procedures for finding the best spot for the listening position. It works well. I'm still working on my panels - more or less - based on your building bass traps course. This video is a very helpful deeper insight in how you deal with all these conflicting rules that You tube dishes out freely. It reminds me I need to spend time on optimising my stereo image when I get round to it.

Everything explained very well. Best acoustics info and tips on the web from this guy. Great channel.

Great videos as always! Thanks Jesco!

For quite some time, I have been looking to educate myself more on this subject, in order to optimize my acoustics/listening position in my studio. This is by far some of the best content on this subject that i come across, subscribed, and can't wait to watch more of the stuff on your channel. Thanks for great content!

Hello my friend! This is great information you’ve provided! I’m gonna head over to your website for the free workshop. Thank you 🙏

Well explained and much appreciated. It ties in well with LINN's recommended "Tune-Dem" methodology for speaker position optimisation

I would like to genuinely thank you, it’s hard to sift through all of the misinformation. Also, I appreciate you giving me a thorough explanation in a very respectful manner. I am tired of the Internet trolls giving me attitude for asking to be educated on something that I obviously don’t completely understand. Lol.

Loved your post. I am not setting up a studio but simply trying to understand better how to interpret all of the different opinions posted about the optimal placement for my stereo’s speakers. I appreciate your explanation as it was presented in a measured and rational way. I think I will try to relax a bit and just sit back and listen. A few placement modifications will no doubt result in my preferred positions. Thank you.

Home theater enthusiast here. Glad I found this channel. Well presented and digestible. Liked and subscribed

outstanding as usual

Appreciate your videos mate

Really really good explanation. Thank you!

From <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="680">11:20</a> on it's getting really interesting for me and You did a wonderful Job explaining this especially critical "Field" in Room/Listening Position Optimization. I experiment a lot with these Factors and beside basic room treatment (Corner Bass Traps, which where the biggest improvement yet) , these Positions alter the sound in my room drastically . 25sqm Tent ⛺ shaped room under the roof .... Very helpful ❤

Great video thanks

I just want to hug this guy. I can't explain it.

Great call on the boundary bit, I've always gone by that logic, but good to hear a pro say it.🙂 Boundary to me always seemed pointless to a degree because unless the room is infinite width, in my mind the dip just changes to a different frequency anyway.🤔

Interesting discussion. From what you're saying about optimizing first for stereo field, and ignoring boundary locations - I'm curious about a few things. If you have a rectangular room with parallel walls and materials on either side with the same reflection coefficient and acoustic properties - like many interior rooms of residential construction - then your stereo field is going to be fairly good. Especially if you treat primary reflection zones with broadband absorbers, which are cheap and easy to obtain. However, by ignoring speaker wall distance / boundary location - especially distance from the front wall - you now create an issue that you cannot easily solve with treatment or EQ. By not placing the speakers as tight to the front wall as possible, you create non-minimum phase interference which will totally compromise your low end. By placing monitors as close to the front wall as possible, you create a minimum-phase effect with the front wall loading, then easily shelf it down with a LF shelf in the monitor drive signal. Plus, many small monitors actually benefit from the front wall loading in LF. You cannot adequately compensate for non-minimum phase effects, even with adaptive digital EQ. So why create the problem in the first place? Perhaps I misunderstood your advice so I'd like to hear your response.

Thank you

Thank you 🙏

Fantastic 👍

👍🏼Thank You sir. Trust our ears and enjoy the Music! 🎵😎

Ignoring the speaker placement and optimizing on dampened principle i found more stereo image and improved low end responses and continue to find better speaker placements with very minimal incremental movements since I don’t have the capability of measuring speaker responses I just relied with my ears and continue to enjoy the music as I ventured further into my incremental experiments

I know one thing, everyone gets their front firing subwoofer placement wrong and always point them forward right next to their other speakers. Subwoofers work best sitting behind your system and the speaker of the sub should be at 90 degrees facing the wall about 12-16 inches away. A millisecond or two adjust (time alignment) behind with the other speakers and be amazed. One thing I do that most people do not, is set up my stereo in a corner. I take and use a corner of a room and bring the system out from it. This helps greatly reduce any chance of an out of phase signal to bounce off the wall across from your stereo and back into your "in Phase" signal. And room to put the sub behind the system. It does work.

Hello, this is my experience after a lot of research: I applied the 38% rule in my room (small) and speakers properly placed (equilateral, next to the wall).Acoustic treatment (based on wood fiber with Air Flow Resistivity of 3000 kPa*s/m² )on first reflections and corner bass traps ( still missing the ceiling).In the theoretical ideal mixing position I cannot hear the bass, I have to move more towards the speakers or to the back of the room.For the low end I just reference with some bass heavy music in a position I can hear/feel the bass and adjust it on my music. The room sounds less live after treatment and that was checked by before and after measurements(sonar works calibrated mic and Room Eq Wizard). My room is not ideal shape/ dimension and it has a big window along the length in one of the sides of the room, covered with curtains and also partially by standing acoustic panels (2x 20cm depth each). I still have some modes that are not tackled and I had realistic expectations of what could be achieved in a small room, at the end of the day I think it’s very important to listen how a good mix sounds in the room specially the low end and reference mix.You have to FEEL the kick and bass, level match and adjust it in your mix. And also as I side note (and not very talked about), remember that you have to act on three things: 1. Room frequency response and ringing. 2.Loudspeakers with the most flat frequency response or using some eq correction on the speakers. 3.Equal Loudness Curves (aka Fletcher Munson), i.e. you have to mix always at the same and proper level ( to make correct mix decisions) for small rooms usually around 79db SPL. So basically the room, the speakers and you.

Great video as always! Just noticed the phantom speaker test link sent to my email does not seem to be working.

The dip is not just due to boundary effect of rear wall. It’s also due to height of woofer above ground causing out of phase component cancelling direct sound. Speaker set up varies with design and field lobing in particular along with polar response. Controlled directivity speakers tend to have more of the direct sound and phase preserved and makes for easier positioning.

The "33% Rule" and "38% Rule" should no longer be used as suggestions. It's close but not accurate. 33% or 32.8% ONLY work in longer-length rooms. 38% is too close to the 4th harmonic null at 37.5%. The real listening position is at 39.6%. Why? Because it's exactly in between the 4th (37.5%) and 6th (41.7%) harmonic null. You have 37.5% + 41.7% / 2 = 39.6%. So if you are keeping your head in between the harmonic nulls, then your possible Listening Position options between harmonic nulls will always be the same in any room: 32.8%, 39.6%, or 45.8%. Use 45.8% in small-length rooms, 39.6% in medium-length rooms, and use 32.8% in longer-length rooms. Also, lay out your room in a CAD program so you can really see and understand where the room nulls land.

Just use the Wilson Audio Setup Procedure (WASP), or the Sumiko Master Setup. Both optimize speaker position in your room with your existing furnishings.

The best news in all this is that with modern equipment it's pretty hard to actually set up a bad room. All placement and treatment advice is arbitrary and will change from room to room, so there are no hard and fast rules... and, yes, it really is all about getting the stereo image right.

you are a smart person

A little off topic. When making slated acoustic absorption/ diffuser what frequencies should you target after measuring peaks and dips in your room? The peaks or dips ?

Jesco, thank you for all your wonderful information, always super clear and concise. I've been trying to find alternative types of absorption material for making my panels, thinking on something more ecological, safer (even with the saran wrap I don't love the idea of having all those toxic materials in my bedroom) and affordable, where I live insulating materials like fiberglass or rockwool are very hard to find and when I do they're not the appropriate density and very expensive, I'm sure other people have this problem also. So far I've seen people try cement mixed with wood fibers, sawdust, coconut fibers, cotton, sheep wool, charcoal, perlite, cardboard, sand, feathers, cork, recycled paper, etc..., if possible I think many people would love to get your thoughts on these or other alternative absorbption materials that we can work with. Thanks a lot from Mexico!

Thanks for this video ❤❤ This is the answer of all my questions about the speaker bounty interference in my mixing room. But one thing is a big dip at around 2900 hz wich is obout -9db . Is it also coused by speaker bounty interference or it's becuse of no diffuser at all in my room ? My room is 248 W , 355 L and 250 H in cm.

Vey interesting approach ! How can I do if I have a Subwoofer ? Using the subwoofer alone when I want to find my Low End Sweet Spot ? Thanks a lot

I heard of the 83% rule. Your speakers should be 83% apart from each other the distance the speaker is to your ear, so if your speakers are 7 ft apart then you should be 8 ft 5 in from your speakers. This is from a guy who set up thousands of stereo systems and wrote a book on it. I saw it on YT lately. It's suppose to be a "starting point" on speaker placement. It's called Jim Smith's Magic Formula. There's a thread on it at Steve Hoffman's discussion site.

Cheers Jesco,, 🍻😎👍‍‍👍‍‍

This just exposed that dsp alignment other than the center of the room is incorrect..because the reflected signals dont return correctly.. he is totally correct

I'm assuming the original poster meant "no LESS than 24 inches" at the end of the first point? EDIT: My bad, it was correct. Still learning about SBIR. Your SonicScoop article was super helpful.

If my choices are speakers behind a flat screen tv (facing it's back), speakers angled around the tv, or speakers on a different plane than listener, what would you choose? Working in a small room with big tv and speakers. My guess is a toss up between 1 and 2.

So i've been testing speaker placements around my rather square-ish room......I have different wall materials on each side unfortunately, making this topic a very difficult for me to pin down. I have invested in some 6" absorbers from GIK (Sound blocks - x43), which has helped a lot with the low end definition for sure. My problem currently is which wall to go with for my speaker placement. I've currently gone with (right up) against my sliding door window pane and windows (with white shutters that have to stay there due to my condo rules)....my thinking is that most of the low energy is going to make its way out towards my backyard/deck....and I've treated the back wall with as much of the absorption and reflections for the back as I can get away with. Am I better off with the cement wall as the speaker wall vs my glass sliding doors? - I should add that with the sound blocks I have 4 stacks of 4 each in each corner as bass traps...and 6 stacks of 3 each for the sides and walls.

I need to have for example a sofa close behind me otherwise my speakers do not sound correct and I can’t work out why this is. If I have nothing behind me certain bass notes sound distorted. I suppose the answer is to fill your room with soft furnishings. Also Dolby recommend a reference listening position of 2/3 of your rooms length which seems to work well for me.

Can Hedd type 20 and Sub flat mount to the wall? Do they design for use like that?

Great info in your vids. The swallowing noises can get to be a bit much though…

SBIR can also happen because of the floor.

Thanks for understanding the concerns of amateur home studio builders.. This was really helpfull

Thanks Jesco, this is so helpful. I was hoping once you mentioned stereo imaging, you would touch upon some guidelines about the minimum or optimal distance between the speakers. My are now 110cm apart. Can someone comment more on that topic? Thanks.

I think I just an unworkable situation that's too short from wall to wall. My polk speakers some how have 0 bass in my seating position, but if I walk behind the couch or forward of the seating position, the bass comes through. So I seem to be sitting in some sort of void where the bass reflection are literally canceling themselves out... But I can't move my seat position and moving the speakers closer or further from the wall makes little difference. It's kind of annoying. I just run a big long wire to my head sets now lol

For me it was very fast clear that all this rules will be a compromise anyway. To know all the Rulesd will help to find the right Compromise for you.

I wonder? Does any of this apply to wall mounted speakers?

Frequencies below the absorption coefficient are reflective when they encounter a poreus absorber not thicker than 1/8th of the wavelength against a masonry wall. A light wall will reflect less. A common gypsum wall will reflect like 10% on 100 Hz.

I have always wonderd, if I was to build a studio from a contruction point of view, meaning, there is no room before I build a room.. what would you do in terms of shape of the room, materials, room measers, placement of desk and speakers,isolation, measers etc.? Would be a wonderfull video to watch. I am an EDM style producer that are looking to buy a plot in the future, but I am concerned about these things

Thumbs up for the thumbnail!!!

In case of a asimmetric room, would you rather have a big window on one of your sides or on the front or back of the speakers? The room is rectangular and the window is on the short side

What you say doesnt seem to match with the speaker placement recommendations on the Genelec site say. They recommend to avoid from 60cm to 1.1M (low Frequency effect) and to avoid less than 5cm (port).

Is there any actually any rule/guideline at all for distance between your speakers?

I notice that you keep talking about studio acoustics and not stereo listening room acoustics. Would the same principles apply in a typical audiophile listening room?

Your face reminds me of Jennifer Lawrence ❤

I have a very small room with the closet doors missing. The previous owners took them because I found that the width of the closet isn't standard so they were custom built. All I have is a curtain there. I feel really discouraged to even attempt to treat my room so my mixes suffer

is it normal when I move my head within the triangle sweetspot (head position) back and forward that the sound is changing? It drives me crazy.

I am building my studio from scratch, should I build parallel walls? Or should i angle them? Thx

I don’t want to be rude but all said in this video was flat out Voodoo. Just kidding, very scientific. Correct and helpful, thanks Jesco!

How to get accurate transient response in a small room

Nice video. Sound interacts with everything. Too many variables. Experimentation is required. Practicality can also limit where you can place your speakers or find an optimal listening position. So you can't realistically follow every rule or guideline. 😉

Everything about my set up is non ideal. Room shape. My screens vs monitors. Multi use studio. So I just had to do the best I could to get an even sound.

More than 24" ? Or should that be no less than ...... 24" from baffle to front wall, gives just over 3 ml secs reflection, which I think blurs the sound stage depth. Best if the front wall is treated with diffusion (possibly quadratic diffusers) and having front baffle at least 3 feet from front wall (5 ml secs reflection, minimum so that reflection does not interfer with direct sound). I have a treated stereo listening room ( not a studio) where I have my speakers 4.5 feet from front wall (room is 28 feet long, 12.5 wide), and find this gives best stereo image and soundstage . I think most don't realize how pulling speakers out from the front wall can really help with soundstage depth and stereo image. But then again, trust your ears ..... takes but a few minutes to move speakers around and try.

Used the speaker manual that gave min max distances, then tried to get that as a start and LISTEN. A lot ;-) Experimenting gave me a huge difference in sound (stage). Every room is different.... to be fair, this is a livingroom hifi, not a studio

I heard about this 38% "guideline" first from Ethan Winer - not sure if that is who you were thinking of?

The 38% “Rule” was by Wes Lachot

my room operates under the 3.8 centimeter rule . anymore than that and i'd trip trying to go through the door.

There are rules and then there are no Rules except move stuff around and try different placements and listening positions.. You have to play around to find the sweet spot for everything.

its easier when you build the room around the speakers ;) ( room in room )

A picture worth a thousand words. Why don’t you put a diagram here?

Can't navigate to the speaker test video

My speakers do not a ports on them

Another KZfaqr just sitting and talking to the camera with out any any footage from speakers 😂

You know what? If you are an Audioholic or just someone who takes listening to music or media seriously well then good for you. Lucky there are thousands of times more of us that regard audio on a lesser level of importance. We have a room that we may do something else entirely in like other hobbies or something of a more social, if not domestic nature. For us Music and Media is just a nice addition. Not necessarily carried to any extreme but just an additional dimension. We are not going to put sound dampeners on the walls and ceilings we are not going to rearrange our populated room. I guess this video just wasnt for me.

then why not just call it 40%

I asked the gf to put my towers where she thought they sounded best. Next thing I knew they were in the fire pit 😫

Blabla zzzzzz

Your statement about the distance to mix in ANY room is bullshit as well. It is FALSE. Room acoustics is NOT about hypotheses or "theories" it is physics. I agree with you about the woofer size vs distance. It's bullshit as well. 1. You should pay attention to the equilateral triangle 2. Your listening position must be (not a recommendation!) 0.375 times the length of the room. PERIOD. 3. You must pay close attention to room modes and their balance in the room

Alright people.... Time to go metric...

The woofer size spacing thing is ridiculous. If you have double 8" woofers, do you space your speakers 16' apart? 24' apart for quad 6" woofers? WTF? This seems like ancient nonsense and if it ever did have any real meaning, it certainly isn't relevant with modern multi driver woofers.