• The move to the new server is done. There are some software and database maintenance updates in process. This has us passing the hat around to help out. We appreciate any donations. Seriously, even a dollar helps. The payment page may be found here - https://www.audiokarma.org/support.html

Speaker Placement in Regard to Chennel Separation

Bratwurst7s

Bratwurst7s

In The Frying Pan
Subscriber
Greetings,
I started a thread a while back asking about peoples thoughts regarding amp channel separation and it's relation to imaging. I suppose that I worded it poorly or it was just regarded as too dumb to comment on but I never got a single response.

Forgive the rambling approach, I'm getting to the point shortly. :D The last year or so I've been using a Onkyo DX-6900 cd player (90db channel separation) and after a lot of tweaking found that my speakers with my Yamaha AX-1090 (65db channel separation) gave the best imaging with the speakers toed in till they just slightly crossed in front of my listening position.

Earlier this week I swapped out the Onkyo cdp with a Denon DCD-1290 (110db channel separation). Aside from the (to my ears) much better detail I was surprised to hear that imaging was worse than with the Onkyo at first. I've been tweaking the speaker toe in and am now at slightly outside of center on my listening position and have achieved imaging that's at least as good as before. I'm hoping that over the next week or so I'll be able to get better results with more tweaking.

So I'm really curious to hear other peoples experiences regarding their speaker placement in regard to their amps and source devices, thoughts on device channel separation and how it effects their speaker placement, and if you have had similar experiences concerning needing to adjust speaker placement after changing amps or source devices.

Further in that direction, I'm also interested to hear about your experiences regarding the above and how (if at all) it changed as you did room treatments. Did adding room treatments lead you to need to change your speaker placement and or toe in?

Thanks for your patience with my long winded questions,
James

edit: Darn it, I spelled Channel wrong in the thread tittle.
edit 2: I should have added that my speakers are almost perfectly on the golden triangle in regards to spacing L-R and listening position, and are about 7 feet apart/in front of me.
 
Last edited:
Register to hide this ad
I have found that it is essential to have the speakers placed symmetrically in front of the listening position. (equal spacing to the left and right). Between 6 and 12 feet apart, and benefitting from a little toe-in. Too much toe-in, is with the crossing point in front of me, I like it better if behind me. I am not able to add room treatments due to adverse WAF and having a non-dedicated listening room.

However, I can appreciate that lees common or 'radically' designed speakers may require a different approach.
 
Last edited:
Although what follows is not really the case (difference in recording/engineering):
Envision an auditorium stage-that is the speakers properly plsced.
You are in the best seat (soundwise)-this is your listening spot.
If both your ears are good, you should hear no real separation, but if you move left or right, you might.
 
The best advice I have received and can pass along is, experiment with speaker placement. Toe in, toe out, straight ahead, further apart, closer together, closer to the wall, further away, even which wall is behind them. Until you've tried a lot of different possible places and positions, you will never know the best place or position according to YOUR ears. Every time I get new speakers or move my system to a different room, I spend a lot of time on getting the speakers in just the right orientation. Placing the speakers "just anywhere" or in the most convenient spot is not the way to find the best sound they have to offer. So, doing the same when replacing any component upstream, its going to be just as important to move the speakers around as it is when you replace the speakers. Just my 1 cent.
 
Thanks for the replies guys. But it looks like I didn't phrase my questions very well. I'll try again.

Background: I've owned my speakers for 32 years. They are heavily modified and are old friends that I am intimately familiar with. I've owned my amp since 1998 and nothing has changed there, trusty old workhorse.

I understand about speaker placement (width, distance, tilt and toe-in). My speakers are placed on small stands that place the tweeters just at ear height. Over the year that I used the Onkyo DX-6900 cdp I went through the long process of tweaking speaker placement to get the best imaging (speakers about 7 ft apart and 7ft from my listening position, level, toe-in to slightly crossed in relation to my listening position).

When I changed cd players to the Denon DCD-1290 I had expected that i might hear a slightly enhanced imaging without any change to speaker position do to the Denon's better definition/clarity and 20db more channel separation.

What surprised me was that imaging was worse than the Onkyo until I started tweaking speaker toe-in. I am already into the process of making that adjustment and imaging is getting better. At this point I am at a toe-in aimed slightly outside my sitting/listening position. Over time that will be refined till I get it perfect and I'll take measurements so I can duplicate it if something gets moved. (speakers currently 20cm from the wall, 210cm apart C/C with about 15° of toe in)

I was surprised that changing the cdp resulted in needing to find a new speaker placement adjustment to get the best imaging, although I probably shouldn't have been surprised.

The questions: What are your experiences after changing to a different cdp or amp, and after making room treatments?
Did you have to make changes to your speaker placement because your system imaging changed after changing one component in the system?

Cheers,
James
 
Last edited:
It actually never got worse in my situation, not that I am drawing on a very-big well of experience in that department. Any chance at all that the new CDP, while having better channel separation, might somehow still not be putting out a stereo image as 3D and natural-sounding as the old CDP? I'm not necessarily trying to say it's the case (or not), I'm just trying to eliminate it from the list of possibilities.

My W90's, my main speakers (listed in signature), are very-dependent on placement, not to mention tube power, but with those two areas properly-handled, they serve up a wide, seamless, 3D wall of sound, so it's hard to notice that my DAC is the weak link in my chain (I don't use a CDP... I mostly-play music off of my hard drives using a PC-based music server setup.. VLC Media Player with Virtual Audio Cable for bypassing the Windows hoops & hurdles... My DAC is an HRT MSII, maybe 2011... It's actually a great DAC for those with wide-imaging speakers because soundstage-width might be it's most-noticeable weakness).
 
The difference you are hearing is most likely due to the DAC or output (opamp) sections of the different CD players, and has little or nothing to do with the channel separation spec.

What is the channel separation of your amp? This is the final link in the chain before the speakers, so if your amp has a channel separation figure lower than that of the input, you are limited by that number, regardless of how much improvement you make on the input stage.

Another factor to consider is the recording that you are using for comparison. As you add resolution to a system, great recordings will sound better, but not so good recordings will sound much worse, as the higher resolution will bring out the flaws that were not so apparent at lower resolution. Think of it as looking at something from a distance and then looking at the same object up close.

I listen to a lot of vinyl, and even the best of cartridges cannot achieve channel separation numbers even close to what you have cited for your CD players; however, they still achieve fantastic imaging/soundstage.

I find that speaker placement and listening position have the greatest impact on imaging/soundstage.

Hope this is closer to the answer/response you were looking for...
 
Last edited:
Gang-Twanger said:
Any chance at all that the new CDP, while having better channel separation, might somehow still not be putting out a stereo image as 3D and natural-sounding as the old CDP? I'm not necessarily trying to say it's the case (or not), I'm just trying to eliminate it from the list of possibilities.
Click to expand...

Sure, the Denon is very new to me and it's entirely possible that it has poorer imaging. But if so they did something really wrong considering it was the top of it's line '92-'94 and 2.5 times more expensive at the time than the Onkyo.

But actually the imaging is now every bit as good as the Onkyo after starting to make speaker position adjustments. Since I've only just started to make adjustments I suspect that it can get a lot better with some more tweaking.

I know next to nothing about phase and reflections and their interactions, but am suspecting that the Denon's very different sound (more detail and clarity to my ears, especially in the higher end) is creating different reflections in my room, perhaps affecting reflection phase, and that's why my system has different imaging than before. That's just a wild guess.

Cheers,
James
 
I'm betting the vintage cd player is getting tired and playing havoc with your imaging. I haven't had much luck either with the parade of high end older cd players that have been through here. They just did not sound right and could not be made to in their original state. Perhaps try a more modern one (even an inexpensive one) before you do anything drastic to your set up.
 
savatage1973 said:
The difference you are hearing is most likely due to the DAC or output (opamp) sections of the different CD players, and has little or nothing to do with the channel separation spec.

What is the channel separation of your amp? This is the final link in the chain before the speakers, so if your amp has a channel separation figure lower than that of the input, you are limited by that number, regardless of how much improvement you make on the input stage.

Another factor to consider is the recording that you are using for comparison. As you add resolution to a system, great recordings will sound better, but not so good recordings will sound much worse, as the higher resolution will bring out the flaws that were not so apparent at lower resolution. Think of it as looking at something from a distance and then looking at the same object up close.

I listen to a lot of vinyl, and even the best of cartridges cannot achieve channel separation numbers even close to what you have cited for your CD players; however, they still achieve fantastic imaging/soundstage.

I find that speaker placement and listening position have the greatest impact on imaging/soundstage.

Hope this is closer to the answer/response you were looking for...
Click to expand...

OK. Makes sense. My amp only has 65db separation. While it's clear that upstream source can't expand the final output separation I'm not really clear about what acoustic or phase affects a change upstream (expansion) might have on the final output.

I have set of cd's that I always use for testing any system changes, Loggins & Messina's Full Sail, Ry Cooder's Bop Till You Drop, The first Dire Straits, Supertramp's COTC and a few others. Chosen for clarity and the variety of instruments, they've been pretty good test music so far.

Cheers,
James
 
Bratwurst7s said:
Sure, the Denon is very new to me and it's entirely possible that it has poorer imaging. But if so they did something really wrong considering it was the top of it's line '92-'94 and 2.5 times more expensive at the time than the Onkyo.

But actually the imaging is now every bit as good as the Onkyo after starting to make speaker position adjustments. Since I've only just started to make adjustments I suspect that it can get a lot better with some more tweaking.

I know next to nothing about phase and reflections and their interactions, but am suspecting that the Denon's very different sound (more detail and clarity to my ears, especially in the higher end) is creating different reflections in my room, perhaps affecting reflection phase, and that's why my system has different imaging than before. That's just a wild guess.

Cheers,
James
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had to ask because you had mentioned that it was not right at first with the new CDP, but GOT BETTER after some speaker-placement adjustments, and I wanted to rule out those improvements merely-being a result of those placement adjustments and not a result of the new CDP (or even further, eliminate the possibility that the new CDP was dragging your system down in terms of it's 3D stereo imaging, and that the speaker adjustments weren't necessary to get you back to the point you were already at with the OLD CDP). See what I'm saying? One thing this sport has taught me in the fairly-short time I've been at it is this: There are far too many factors at play in setting up and maintaining a good hi-fi setup for us to leave it up to guesswork and hunches (which is why this second thread was a good idea on your part). This is something I've learned the hard way. Hell, I'm STILL learning that lesson.
 
Last edited:
Bratwurst7s said:
I have set of cd's that I always use for testing any system changes, Loggins & Messina's Full Sail, Ry Cooder's Bop Till You Drop, The first Dire Straits, Supertramp's COTC and a few others. Chosen for clarity and the variety of instruments, they've been pretty good test music so far.

Cheers,
James
Click to expand...

And familiarity as well. You KNOW those CD's well, musically AND sonically. Even a change in the CD PRESSING (one that, say, was not mastered by the same mastering engineer) can have a dramatic effect on the sound of your system.
 
Gang-Twanger said:
There are far too many factors at play in setting up and maintaining a good hi-fi setup for us to leave it up to guesswork and hunches. This is something I've learned the hard way. Hell, I'm STILL learning that lesson.
Click to expand...

Not so much "guesswork and hunches", but certainly a matter of "trial and error". I've been at this a long time and through thousands of dollars.

The best laid plans and piles of spec sheets don't mean anything when it is all hooked up and running.

I've had the opportunity to hear "dumpster rescue" systems that sounded great and systems that cost more than my house sound like ass.

Like most people, I have to live in/with my home--unless I want to spend a ton of money for an addition for the "perfect" audio room, it is what it is, and it is paid for.

Unless I want to re-finance my home, I'll live with the gear that I can afford and do the best I can within budget. Again, "it is what it is".

My system is no slouch, but you are not going to see it on the cover of "Stereophool" magazine anytime soon, but it does what I want it to.

Find what you like and works for YOU--YOU are the one paying for it and living with it, so if it works for you, that's all that matters.

The grass may always seem greener, but in reality, maybe not.
 
savatage1973 said:
Not so much "guesswork and hunches", but certainly a matter of "trial and error". I've been at this a long time and through thousands of dollars.

The best laid plans and piles of spec sheets don't mean anything when it is all hooked up and running.

I've had the opportunity to hear "dumpster rescue" systems that sounded great and systems that cost more than my house sound like ass.

Like most people, I have to live in/with my home--unless I want to spend a ton of money for an addition for the "perfect" audio room, it is what it is, and it is paid for.

Unless I want to re-finance my home, I'll live with the gear that I can afford and do the best I can within budget. Again, "it is what it is".

My system is no slouch, but you are not going to see it on the cover of "Stereophool" magazine anytime soon, but it does what I want it to.

Find what you like and works for YOU--YOU are the one paying for it and living with it, so if it works for you, that's all that matters.

The grass may always seem greener, but in reality, maybe not.
Click to expand...

Right.

:scratch2:

Wait.. Are you saying that "trial & error" is NOT a good thing? Or are you simply saying that it's good for certain situations that CALL for it? Just wondering.

I agree that it's a black art for sure. There are additional factors at work that cannot be measured by a digital multimeter or calculated through Boxbuilder Pro version 2.0 for Windows 8 (or whatever). Synergy, for one thing, is extremely-important. ESSENTIAL in my opinion.

I've ultimately found that a lot of the amps, receivers, and speakers I used to drool over back when I first joined AK are really not my sort of thing at all, and I guess that's the point. Hone in on what kind of sound you're after, and then hone in on how and where to get it. And take advice from experienced AK'ers with like-minded tastes. That's something I try to do.

My best guess (Uh Oh... ) on the OP's situation is that maybe the new CDP, despite having better specs in certain areas, still doesn't enjoy the same level of synergy with his system (the OTHER gear in his system) that the OLD CDP did. And like someone already said, perhaps the DAC chip in the new CDP either isn't as good as the DAC chip in the old CDP, or doesn't jive with your other gear as much as the DAC chip in the old CDP.
 
Last edited:
Gang-Twanger said:
My best guess (Uh Oh... ) on the OP's situation is that maybe the new CDP, despite having better specs in certain areas, still doesn't enjoy the same level of synergy with your other gear that the OLD CDP does.
Click to expand...

This is entirely possible. We'll have to see, I'm in the early days of getting used to it and setting it up. I think that this point I'm going to leave my speakers the way they are for a week or so and then make another small adjustment. I'll keep reducing the toe-in step by step with a week or so between till I don't like it and then work back.

Also, I still haven't done any room treatments yet and it's time to get started. I'm going to start with the simple step of buying a nice rug to lay down in front of the speakers. That should fit into next months budget. I really don't want to try to make too many changes at once though.

Cheers,
James
 
motorstereo said:
I'm betting the vintage cd player is getting tired and playing havoc with your imaging. I haven't had much luck either with the parade of high end older cd players that have been through here. They just did not sound right and could not be made to in their original state. Perhaps try a more modern one (even an inexpensive one) before you do anything drastic to your set up.
Click to expand...

I actually bought 2 of the exact same cdp. The second one just arrived yesterday. After cleaning it up I'll swap it out with the 1st one and listen for any differences.

Cheers,
James
 
Bratwurst7s said:
Also, I still haven't done any room treatments yet and it's time to get started. I'm going to start with the simple step of buying a nice rug to lay down in front of the speakers. That should fit into next months budget. I really don't want to try to make too many changes at once though.

Cheers,
James
Click to expand...

Change only one thing at a time. IMO this is the only way to make changes/improvements.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom