neo33 Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 I just picked up a pair of beautiful Heresy speakers in raw birch with a medium stain for $275 yesterday at my local audio store. They are in excellent condition and they have no risers. What is the best placement for the speakers? How high should they be? How many feet apart? Should they be toe-in at all? All inputs are appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Disc Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 If It were my speaker, I would treat the Heresys as a bookshelf and place them on solid stands. I would try a nearfield setup. About 6-9 feet apart and several feet from a back wall. Toed in so speaker is directed towards your listing position. Height of tweeter at about ear level. Final placement / adjustment would have to be done by ear. Further tweeks, I would also make sure the stands had enough top surface area so that you could experiment with speaker isolation and dampening. Vibrapods work well for this. Good luck and enjoy. tb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ben. Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 We've got a team of experts working on it. With no room dimensions or any particulars, your wait is... more than 2 minutes. Please hold. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TBrennan Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 Neo----Because of the directivity of the horns you can ignore the "common knowledge" placement rules that many say apply to direct-radiating speakers. Heresys work very well close to walls or on bookshelves. Mine are laying on their sides on bookshelves with the tweeters inboard. With the tweeters outboard the image was too wide and the tonal balance was soft. Mind though that that's in MY situation, yours is probably different. In any case getting the treble drivers at ear height is very important, other wise the imaging is indistinct and "cloudy". When I brought my Heresys home I first tried them on a higher set of shelves on which some KRKs had sounded very good. The Heresys sounded, well, kinda bad. I put them away in the closet and put the KRKs back. I thought about the problem and next day rearranged the shelves on my bookcases to get the Heresys at ear height. Ahhhh, that made all the difference. Play around with them Neo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dubai2000 Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 Neo, congrats on your find. Contrary to received (and experienced)wisdom, my Heresy (on stands - tweeter at ear level) work best hardly toed in...but of course it all depends on your room (mine is really small!), distance to speakers from sweet spot etc - but of course you will know all this... Wolfram Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Disc Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 The amount of toe-in is subjective and depends on room and listener preference. I personally like toe-in and nearfield as it allows me to factor out much of the room acoustical faults as possible. This is why I prefaced my post with "if they were my...." tb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ben. Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 Please continue to hold... your business is important to us.... your current wait time is... more than 2 minutes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dzapper Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 Neo, I have mine twelve feet apart, four feet from the side walls and three from the rear. Toed toward the couch on the other wall with the listening position about fifteen feet as the crow flies. they are on the floor with the fronts raised four inches over the backs on "custom "risers, a piece of 1x4 pine until I can work outside and make some out of black walnut to match my speakers. With the SW-15 the little suckers rival the K-horns! Rick Edit: Ben, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olorin Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 ---------------- On 4/9/2004 11:16:33 AM neo33 wrote: I just picked up a pair of beautiful Heresy speakers in raw birch with a medium stain for $275 yesterday at my local audio store. They are in excellent condition and they have no risers. What is the best placement for the speakers? How high should they be? How many feet apart? Should they be toe-in at all? All inputs are appreciated. ---------------- IME, IMO, etc . . . In a small room, without a sub, I like mine in the corners. They pick up some bass reinforcement that way. They'll also pick up some bass gain by being coupled to the floor. You may or may not like that effect. Getting the tweeters to ear level helps a lot with the imaging and clarity, so without the risers you've got a choice to make there. Before I had the sub, my favorite placement was on stands, about 1-2 feet in from the room's corners, toed in to my listening position. My present room only has one good corner I could use, but now there is a sub, so corner placement is a non issue. I am also only about nine feet from them, and they are hardly toed in at all. They're about a foot off the back wall for WAF and furniture arrangement reasons. I'm sure if you fiddle around with them, you'll find the setup that suits your ears and your room best. I hope you get a lot of enjoyment from them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtice Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 I have a pair of Heresy II's in a long room on the short wall, about a foot from back and side walls. I made speaker stands (and filled them with sand) to get them elevated to ear level. I have them pretty tight to the corners which helps reinforce bass. I bet a small sub would round it out nicely. The room dimensions are close to the golden ratio and even though bass is shy they have a very smooth, unified sound. Room interaction is what placement is all about, so you just have to experiment. Have just doubled the pleasure factor in my 20x24 office/listening room. I had a pool table in the room which dictated everything. The LaScalas were placed on each end, so even though I had a clear path from each speaker to the sweet spot, the speakers were physically separated. I sold the pool table this week and today I worked with speaker placement. I'm finding that about 55 inches from the sides walls and 46 from the back wall just makes them come alive. I have them on the 20 foot wall with a little more than 9 feet center to center and 10 feet to the chair. I used the clapping method (forget the real name) to find the point where the resonance changed and worked from that point. Depending on your room size and shape it may work with the Heresy's. I've tried the golden ratio method and it's not magic in my squarish room. I'm sure you must know all about the various methodsif not I can post links. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Taylor Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 I have mine sitting on two milk crates each on there sides with the tweeter inwards towards the middle and about three feet from the back wall and two feet from the side walls toed in to the listening area, with the speakers ten foot apart, sitting on the recliner in a small living room I find this sounds the best to me. I'am sure I could improve this set up with better stands and all and I'am sure if I had a wife the milk crates would have to go, but for know the milk crates rock. I'am sure glad Paul Klipsch lived and spent his life making these and other great speakers for all of us to listen to, think about it if there was know Paul we might all be sitting around listening to Bose speakers ( Oh god I think I'am going to get sick). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 Like all of PK's speaker's, the Heresy benefits from corner placement. If you don't have the corners, get them against the walls, or put them on the floor and tilt them back. I enjoyed listening to mine all of these ways. A great speaker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Disc Posted April 10, 2004 Share Posted April 10, 2004 Regarding toe-in * "Toe-in affects the presentation's overall spaciousness. No toe-in prduces a larger, more billowy, less precise soundstage. Instruments are less clearly delieated, but the presentaton is bigger and more spacious. Toeing-in the loudspeakers shrinks the apparant size of the sound-stage, but allows more precise image localization. Again, the amount of toe-in depends on the loudspeaker, room, and personal preference. There's no substitute for listening, adjusting toe-in, and listening again." Distance from rear wall affects soundstaging * "Generally, the farther away from the rear wall the loudspeakers are, the deeper the soudstage. A deep, expansive soundstage is rarely developed with the loudspeakers near the rear wall. Pulling the loudspeakers out a few feet can make the difference between poor and spectacular soundstaging. Unfortunately, many living rooms don't accommodate loudspekaers far out into the room. If the loudspeakers must be close the the rear wall, make the wall acoustically absorbent." I realize that all speakers can gain bass when closer to a back wall or corner. When I first purchase my Cornwalls I had them against my rear walls. I found I much preferred moving the Cornwalls out into the room, toeing them in, and getting them off the floor. Your milage may vary. Sure moving a Heresy closer to a back wall will improve the bass response, but probably at the expense of soundstaging. Coupling the Heresys to the floor via proper stand should help in the bass area. Shorter stands, closer to foor are better for bass. IMHO * excerpts from The Complete Guide to High-Rd Audio by Robert Harley Editor-in-chief of the Absolute Sound Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TBrennan Posted April 10, 2004 Share Posted April 10, 2004 Tbabb----Yeah but Harley's a foolish ninny and the foremost proponent of the nervous, twittering, hand-wringing school of audio. And as far as soundstage goes mind that what works for direct-radiators, with their willy-nilly dispersion, doesn't always apply to horns, actually seldom applies to horns. In my experience anyway. Anyway I'll certainly consider your experiences but Harley, man, citing Harley to a horn enthusiast is like citing Aquinas to a Baptist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Disc Posted April 10, 2004 Share Posted April 10, 2004 Tom - By what measure do you consider Mr. Harley a fool? His book, which I have read, is very insightful and well written. I have found most of what he states in the book to be true. My experience is a polar opposite to yours, that when I have tried toe-in to improve soundstaging, it has worked in all cases. I have found this the case with Cornwalls, Chorus IIs, Kg4s, RB-5s, and Kg2s. I see no reason I would not work with Hereseys. -tb ---------------- On 4/10/2004 10:13:49 AM TBrennan wrote: Tbabb----Yeah but Harley's a fool and the foremost proponent of the nervous, hand-wringing school of audio. And as far as soundstage goes mind that what works for direct-radiators, with their willy-nilly dispersion, doesn't always apply to horns, actually seldom applies to horns. In my experience anyway. ---------------- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnalOg Posted April 10, 2004 Share Posted April 10, 2004 My Scalas are about 1 foot away from the rear wall and experience exeptional soundstage. Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted April 10, 2004 Share Posted April 10, 2004 Maybe you should read some stuff by PK too. Though pulling things out from the wall will add some depth to the soundfield, I've found that PK was right -- that taking ANY speaker, and pushing it into a corner or against a wall, allows those boundaries to becomes extensions of the baffle. The best way to make a small speaker sound "big" -- is to get it against something. Of couse, this presupposes that one doesn't have large objects on either side of the speaker causing early first order reflections and out of phase wave cancellations. I did a lot of experimentation with the RF-7s, and they could easily fill the room with sound if I took advantage of corner loading -- which wasn't the case with other placement options. As far as "depth" of soundfield goes -- there isn't anything there that a little bit clean power and SPL can't cure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TBrennan Posted April 10, 2004 Share Posted April 10, 2004 TBabb----Harley imagines things. The foolishness he's written, man I've read so much of it I can't cite anything in particular. He's one reason I stopped reading the magazines he worked at. He has so little credibility with me that even if he started telling truth I wouldn't believe it. And he has no idea of how horns work, is totally ignorant on the subject. Unlike Holt say, a high-end guy who understands horns. Toe-in can work very well with horns, no doubt. Until forced by circumstance into bookshelf placement I ususally toed-in my horns. But horns can image very well when pushed into corners or placed close to walls, common wisdom is that DRs can't image well when placed so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Disc Posted April 10, 2004 Share Posted April 10, 2004 ---------------- On 4/10/2004 10:36:40 AM DeanG wrote: Maybe you should read some stuff by PK too. Though pulling things out from the wall will add some depth to the soundfield, I've found that PK was right -- that taking ANY speaker, and pushing it into a corner or against a wall, allows those boundaries to becomes extensions of the baffle. The best way to make a small speaker sound "big" -- is to get it against something. Of couse, this presupposes that one doesn't have large objects on either side of the speaker causing early first order reflections and out of phase wave cancellations. I did a lot of experimentation with the RF-7s, and they could easily fill the room with sound if I took advantage of corner loading -- which wasn't the case with other placement options. As far as "depth" of soundfield goes -- there isn't anything there that a little bit clean power and SPL can't cure. ---------------- Dean, I'll have to disagree with you on that one. If your soundstage is not there, adding more volume won't increase the soundstage depth. it will fill the room with more sound, but increasing the depth of the soundstage of instruments.. heh it won't. For what it worth, I could care less if the room is filled with sound, I want the "soundstage" of the performance to sound wide and deep at my listening position. Sure the soundstage collapes when I walk accross the room, but this is the method I choose to listen to music. Obviously my listening habits are different than yours too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkrop Posted April 10, 2004 Share Posted April 10, 2004 Most of the heresy speakers I have seen over the years were placed on end tables! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.