Tower position tuning

This is to share a recent experience with my Towers position tuning.

I received my Towers around mid-Feb, and I was very eager to check out how they sound in my room since my main focus is two channel stereo setup, so I have them move to position the very next day it was delivered. I spent the new few days moving them around to find the best sounding location yet not to be too out of place that is not convenient to live with.

My room is not the best, and after few days of adjustments, they stayed where they are until this past week. In between, although I thought they sounded good, I also feel they can be better, but since I have other things I want to test, I moved on. Starting from the amp section, I slowly work my way back to DAC, endpoint (streamer), and later remove the endpoint by connecting directly to the music server via optical USB, and the latest was a new server. With all these changes, things improved quite well along the way, finally, last week, the urge of testing speaker placement returned, so I started to move them around once again. This time, I got a bit more relentless, not only I adjust them closer-in, farther-apart much more pronounced, I also adjust the toe-in from aiming tweeter directly at the listening position to slightly toe-out. I also experimented different listening position by moving the listening chair back and forth to test different angles to the speakers. After I settled with a position I feel it was optimum, I will check it again the very next day by moving speakers around slightly to confirm for the next three days, and now, for three days in a row, speaker position stayed without more adjustment.

The result is a beautifully portrayed sound stage that I finally like and think it is the best I can accomplish in this room. It was a lot of effort to get here, in fact, much more than I anticipated, but the end result is well worth it.

Is this the end? Not yet, I am now starting to work on creating convolution files to use in my music player to see if additional benefits can be accomplished, but having the speaker position set certainly is the first step.

Thanks for reading.

It took me a couple of years of experimenting to find the best position and toe-in for our Towers - a few days sounds easy to me!

The process of moving speakers and listening to changes is very interesting to me, fortunately. Even smallish changes in position and/or toe-in can have audible results.

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Originally Posted by James

It took me a couple of years of experimenting to find the best position and toe-in for our Towers - a few days sounds easy to me!

The process of moving speakers and listening to changes is very interesting to me, fortunately. Even smallish changes in position and/or toe-in can have audible results.

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Good to know you have similar experience. I also find small changes can be audible, the movement in later stages becomes quite small, and this is a bit of surprise.

Yes.

My wife got tired of me moving the speakers 1/2" and asking her how they sounded, but she could often hear differences once she was willing to listen.

Did you use any test cd's to help you? We have a Stereophile CD with a chromatic scale that proved very helpful.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by James

Did you use any test cd's to help you? We have a Stereophile CD with a chromatic scale that proved very helpful.

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I have the same CD (I think), but have not use it for many years after I switched to computer based source. I build several playlists with tracks in different resolution and format, and then run these playlists when I do audition and comparison.