Need some placement advice

[ranjith]

I've recently agreed to purchase my first pair of Klipsch, a pair of oak KG2s! Now I know its no cornwall or even a KG4 but everybody has gotta start somewhere right. I think I'll be pleased when they arrive. But currently , being a student, Ive got a bunch of stuff in my room. I drew up a nice little image of my room with some dimensions (in feet). The KG2s will be on speaker stands on either end of what I've labelled in my diagram as "audio equip". In that area ive also got my amp, EQ, cassette player, cdp and TT. Now, do you think its a decent place for the KG2s or should I make changes that will give me a considerably better sound?. On the diagram I forgot to include the fact that above my "bed" and "shelf 2" are large sized windows. Any suggestions would be welcome!

Hope I posted the image right!

Cheers,

Ranjith

[whell]

Not seeing the image. Can you try to repost?

[ranjith]

I did repost the pic, but in case it still isn't working right then heres a link to the pic on the web:

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d71/ranjith_1986/room-dimensions.jpg

Viewing it in full size provides better details, its a fairly small sized pic.

Thanks

[Speedball]

Mmmm, that's not bad, option 2 could be as you walk in the room they could be on the left, as far apart as possible....dealing with cables could be an issue with that setup though.

[ranjith]

You mean on the wall where my closet is? The problem with that is that, there is 1/2feet of wall on either end and the entire wall otherwise is just a big closet. It has one sliding door so one half is always open. And also where would I put my other equip in that case (like cdp, amp and such). I gave that a thought initially but I dont think it'll work well. I only recently got into the audio hobby (or mania?) and so I don't have an audio rack as of now. Its on my list of upgrades. Without the rack, the floor space is quickly filled.

[colterphoto1]

Congrats on your first Klipsch purchase. Remember that the KG2 have a passive radiator (a port with a woofer cone in it) that radiates the low bass. So position away from the walls is somewhat critical.

It's a smallish room, and if you consider that the two main listening postions would probably be the desk (you're a student, right ?) or lying in bed, I might think that opposing corners of the room might be good, with one on the right side of the audio stand, and another on the Shelf2. That way, in either listening postion, you have a speaker L and R of you, never both speakers on the same side of your head. This will preserve the stereo image and make it as wide as possible. You might get additional bass gain from the corner positon, might need to pull speakers out from wall a bit.

Michael

[ranjith]

Another newbie Q, why is it recommended to keep speakers with passive radiators a little away from the wall while some other bookshelves are recommended to be kept quite close to the walls for better bass response?

[colterphoto1]

that PR sound has to have somewhere to go. It's not good for it to exit the cabinet, bounce off the nearby wall, right back into the PR itself. Got to let it breathe, man. So it's much better on a stand or top shelf out in the open than IN a bookshelf itself.

The basic premise of placement is a horn effect. If you were to hang a speaker in the center of the room, it's really trying to radiate in all 360 degrees, a complete sphere, set it on the ground, it's only 1/2 sphere, intersection of wall and floor, the bass picks up dramatically because it's only pumping into 1/4 sphere. Finally, at the intersection of wall/wall/floor and you have it in the mouth of a horn which you can readily see. However, sometimes the bass gets boomy when this occurs.

The best thing you can do is experiment with placement. At most, maybe 1 foot out from the wall would be sufficient to reduce the 'boundary gain' caused by this horn effect. When the speaker has a bass port or passive radiator in the back, placement becomes more critical. But its possible to find good location, otherwise these speakers wouldn't sell at all.

Michael

[ranjith]

Ah, I better understand now. I guess the thrill of having a 2-channel setup is to always tweak it in every which way possible to get the best results.

Also, how far away from the speakers ( lets say they're about 6feet apart from each other) is ideal? Is there some math to this or just to experiment around?

Looking forward to the good times, I currently just have this one kenwood floor stander with a 2" tweeter, 4" busted midrange and a 10" woofer. Sounds HORRIBLE, but my neighbour throwing it out a couple of months back and I figured I can listen to something until I got my first klipsch. Man was I ever wrong, I don't even wanna play my cdp or TT because it sounds so bad. I'll just wait it out for the KG2s to arrive, then take the 10" woofer out of this Kenwood cab and trash the rest.