gheth Posted November 30, 2023 Share Posted November 30, 2023 Morning, hopping the Klipsch gurus here can clue me in! This summer's project was rebuilding my audio cabinet so I could fit a larger screen. Now I'm working on re-positioning my original (bought in 2000!) RF-3 mains. After endlessly playing with position and toe they always sounded endemic. One night I remembered reading raking or tilting them back improves mids, so in desperation I lengthened the front spikes to tilt them back 2.0 degs. I've never experienced such an audio epiphany! The center sweet spot is back, along with the mids, but still good separation. Searching the web I found a few discussions on speaker rake, but none directly dealing with Klipsch. Vandersteen's owners manual for their 1Cs has detailed instructions, including a chart of "Rake" as a function of "Listener Ear Height" vs "Listener Distance To Speaker". But the chart was made for Vandersteens, not sure how applicable it is to Klipschs. Anybody here have any experience With original RF-3s and the optimum, if any, tilt along with any other bits of knowledge. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wuzzzer Posted November 30, 2023 Share Posted November 30, 2023 Things like that are going to depend on your seating position, room, etc. For the best imaging, generally having the speakers aimed directly at your head on both a vertical and horizontal plane is best. So, that could involve both tilting the speakers back or forward depending on the height of your speaker, height of what you're sitting on is and your physical height. I've experimented a lot with my speakers over the years and found the results to be like yours. I have my L/R Heresys on stands that are a little over 30" tall I believe and that puts the drivers pretty much centered with my ears while I'm seated. I have them aggressively toed in and have an equilateral triangle between me and each speaker. With them set up that way, the soundstage is absolutely huge, with sounds extending far beyond the outer edges of the speakers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gheth Posted December 1, 2023 Author Share Posted December 1, 2023 Currently my RF-3s are only slightly toed in and the stage is centered, but very narrow. I'll have to increase the toe and hear what it does. The inner engineer in me wants and loves dealing with numbers! So I ran several different speaker tilt angles verses the 38" ear height and the 115" speaker distance. I've found a related factor is finding the speaker's is"Sonic Center" and calculating the angle that points it at the listening height. I've read several discussions claiming speakers with the same driver configuration as RF-3s (top tweeter with 2 woofers below) its located either in the center of the space between the bottom of the tweeter and the top of the upper woofer or in the center of the tweeter. BTW, I'm attaching the Vandersteen 1C manual I mentioned in my first post. Might be of interest. 1cmanual.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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