Speaker Asylum: REVIEW: Audio Physic Speaker placement technique Speakers by David Aiken

Model:	Speaker placement technique
Category:	Speakers
Suggested Retail Price:	$FREE
Description:	Nearfield speaker placement for best clarity, imaging, soundstage size.
Manufacturer URL:	Audio Physic
Model Picture:	View

Review by David Aiken ( A ) on May 30, 2002 at 00:22:03
IP Address: 210.50.60.242

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for the Speaker placement technique

I moved into a new house a bit under 3 weeks ago so Iâ€™ve been busy setting up the new listening room. My old house was timber with polished sprung wooden floors while the new house is built on a slab and the listening room is carpeted, so thereâ€™s definitely different acoustics. I also have some bookcases loaded with books in the new room and considerably heavier curtains for some additional absorption which Iâ€™m finding nice.
The big experiment, however, has been with speaker placement. Both my old and new rooms are basically combined living/dining areas but where the old room was a rectangular room with a small stub of a wall dividing the two areas halfway along the long side, the new room is L shaped. Neither lend themselves to standard placement techniques but the old room was used as a living and dining space as well as for listening. Since the new house has a large family room which weâ€™re using as the living and dining area, I now have a dedicated space which makes a big difference.
The stem of the L is a space 5.2 metres long and 3.97 metres wide. At the top of the stem on the short wall is a wide open doorway and the corner to the right of the door is cut off by a wall at 45 degrees. The toe of the L is an area 3 metres square giving a 6.97 metre solid wall across the foot of the L.
Since the Audio Physic method is supposed to minimise room effects at the listening position I decided to try using itâ€™s recommendations based on the dimensions of the large stem area and to ignore the toe area for the purposes of set-up. The speakers were placed along the long wall with the listening seat in front of the toe, just in front of where a wall would be if the space had a solid wall cutting off the addition. The speaker drivers are 1.98 metres in front of the long wall and 1.3 metres from the side wall on the left side and the same distance from the door space on the right side. The speakers are toed in to point at a spot around 50 cm behind my head. I was hoping that this would minimise problems caused by the doorway to the right of the right hand speaker and the open area behind the listening position. Iâ€™m happy to find that those hopes were fulfilled and neither the open doorway or the open area behind the listening seat seem to cause any problems.
The speakers are further apart than they were in the old room and that required longer speaker cables. My old XLOs are being replaced with Tara RSC Prime 500 which seems a bit more neutral and also seems to be more detailed and to produce more precise imaging. I listened initially with the XLOs before changing to a loan set of the Taras so that I could get a good appreciation of what the difference in the speaker placement and room characteristics were. Because of their effect on detail and imaging, the Taras seemed to accentuate the major differences caused by the different speaker placement approach.
My Dynaudio Contour 1.3 SEs are now much further away from walls than they were in the old room and the frequency response sounds much smoother overall. In addition the imaging and sound stage are much better with much more precise imaging and a broader, deeper and more open sound stage generally. Foreground vocalists and instruments often seem placed a bit behind the speakers now while in the old room they tended to be more level with the front of the speakers, and the depth of the sound stage is also much greater with a much better delineation of placement of performers within that depth.
The sound stage is wider than before, but part of this is due to the greater distance between the speakers. The extension of the sound stage outside or the speakers is probably no greater than in the old room since it always used to extend considerably beyond the speakers with some discs, but this extension is now apparent on many more discs than before. Overall, the sound stage is considerably larger and the room and speakers disappear much more easily. Itâ€™s much easier to have the illusion that youâ€™re in the same space as the performers and for the sense of that space to be dictated by the acoustics of the recording venue, regardless of the size of that space. The recreation of large reverberant spaces such as churches and cathedrals is quite impressive, as is the revealing of anomalies in the acoustic. As an example, Jonathan Scull reports that Kelly Flint was recorded in an area surrounded by isolation screens while the rest of the musicians were recorded in the natural acoustic of a church for the recording of Daveâ€™s True Storyâ€™s â€œSex Without Bodiesâ€. The deader acoustic surrounding her voice in comparison to the instruments comes through quite clearly now.
Moving sounds also seem to inhabit a more realistic space due to the increased width and depth of the soundstage and their movement sounds more natural as a result. This has provided a fair bit of non-musical enjoyment with some of the extraneous sound effects on some discs, such as the motorcycle in the background of Simon and Garfunkel's "Baby Driver".
Tonally, voices and instruments also sound more natural though part of this effect also comes from the change in cables. One thing Iâ€™m noticing with female voices in particular is less hardness and sibilance on the â€sâ€ sounds, though the reduction in hardness is apparent on all material. I had noticed in the previous room that this hardness was accentuated by closeness of the speakers to walls and moving the speakers to the centre of the room and away from side walls has definitely reduced it.
While the lower bass range has lost a bit of weight with the loss of some wall reinforcement, the bass extension is improved as is tonal rendition in this area. While there is some loss of volume on the 31.5 Hz band when compared to levels in the previous room with the speakers closer to the walls, the 25 Hz tone is now clearly audible although the level there is rolled off from the level at 31.5 hz. I also now get a slight sense of output at 20 Hz which was never evident previously. While the bass below the mid 30s is rolled off and not capable of shaking the room, it does provide information previously missing which is nice. Tonal definition is better and the combination of string and wood tone with acoustic bass is much more apparent whereas before string tone tended to dominate a bit. Again, I think the change in cables has contributed to the change in tonal rendition here, but the shift was apparent to a lesser degree prior to the cable change.
In hindsight I might characterise some of the change as a loss of â€œboxinessâ€ in the sound though I never thought of the Dyns as sounding boxy in the old room. This change, coupled with the reduction in sibilance and hardness on vocals, makes me think quite strongly about the effects of wall proximity on speaker sound. Iâ€™m starting to wonder if some of the criticisms levelled at dynamic speakers in these areas is actually attributable to the placement rather than the speaker design.
In summary, Iâ€™m extremely impressed with the results of the Audio Physic method in a non-rectangular room, and I would seriously recommend this method to anyone including those faced with an odd-shaped space that can be used as a dedicated listening area.
David Aiken

Product Weakness: Method probably not practicable unless the room is solely dedicated to listening due to placement of speakers in the centre of the room.
Product Strengths: Very effective placement method producing a wide range of benefits with no noticeable sonic weaknesses.

Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier:	ME 240 Integrated
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	None
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	Creek CD 43 Mk 2
Speakers:	Dynaudio Contour 1.3 SE on Dynaudio Master stands
Cables/Interconnects:	Home made IC, Tara Labs RSC Prime 500 speaker cables with WBT bananas
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	Classical, jazz, rock, various acoustic ensembles
Room Comments/Treatments:	DIY bass traps in corners behind speakers
Time Period/Length of Audition:	2 weeks
Type of Audition/Review:	Product Owner

Product Weakness:	Method probably not practicable unless the room is solely dedicated to listening due to placement of speakers in the centre of the room.
Product Strengths:	Very effective placement method producing a wide range of benefits with no noticeable sonic weaknesses.