Where do you put your loud speakers?

Posted by the dood on Monday, June 4th, 2007

Someone repeated a story to me.. sounded like this:

“Like you, I’m often helping friends set up music systems. Many of my friends insist that a “listening position” is out of the question for them. Even if they could arrange their room to include a listening chair, they would never use it. They just like to wander around the house while music is playing. Anyway, they’re not going to use up real estate in their living rooms by moving speakers out from the walls.

I hooked a friend up with a nice pair of Wharfedale Diamond 9.1s. ($350/pair) I thought they sounded great for the price in the store. Nice stereo image and everything. But then he put one of the floor behind a chair and another on a bookshelf at the other end of the room, so they sound lousy.

I have a hard time figuring out what to recommend for speakers. All the decent ones are designed to produce a stereo image. But that’s useless for these people. Maybe what they really need is two (or maybe more) speakers that will disperse sound as widely as possible. Wall-mounted (or maybe bookshelf mounted) would be best. There are some surround sound “home theater” speakers designed that way, but most of them seem to have very limited low frequency response, since they assume the front, center, and sub speakers will handle everything below 100 hz or so. And I have no idea how any of those sound anyway.”

Now.. how do you determine whether a speaker is really good then? Imaging means nothing anymore at this point. hmm..

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