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RE: Height and distance of computer workstation near-field monitors.

Posted by Tony Lauck (A) on June 16, 2013 at 18:36:10

In Reply to: Height and distance of computer workstation near-field monitors. posted by Duster on June 16, 2013 at 15:49:29:

My Focal Twin 6be near field monitors are at arm's length from my listening position, with the two speakers forming a 90 degree isosceles triangle at my ears. The tweeters are exactly at ear level and the two 6 inch speakers are on either side, just below as per Focal recommendation. The speakers are configured with the inner 6 inch driver reproducing both midrange and bass and the outer driver just bass. The bottom of the speakers are on foam supports which rest on a computer desk. The front of the speakers is about 5 inches back from the edge of the desk and the back is about 1 food from the wall. This isn't an ideal position, but was selected as a suitable compromise between different sonic factors. The Focals themselves are subject to comb filtering in the bass from the double drivers, but this isn't a factor as my ears are perpendicular and centered to each speaker.

Because of bass gain from the wall proximity the woofers are slightly rolled off using the cross-over setting. The low bass is filled in with a floor positioned Focal subwoofer. The satellites run at their full range, and the sub gain, phase, and polarity were tweaked to provide the smoothest bass response. There are still residual peaks at 60 Hz and 130 Hz from room effects, but these are taken out with software parametric equalization. The resulting bass response is within a few dB down to about 28 Hz. The beryllium tweeters are brutally flat and this makes many bright recordings unlistenable at the flat setting. I have set the tweeter controls about halfway down, which shelves the high frequency response down about 3.5 dB at 10 kHz. This setting was done by listening to several dozen reference recordings of different musical genres and recording styles. The result is that the tonal balance is consistent with one hears at live performances for the better recordings. Imaging of true stereo recordings is superb, with the back corner walls disappearing and the sound stage expanding to a size that depends on the recording perspective.

Getting to this point took about a month of effort, however. One could say that the monitors were really a kit that had to be installed in the room and the system "voiced". Although the high frequencies were set up by ear, it would not have been possible to get the bass right without using a measurement microphone and RTA. Having learned from this effort, I could probably do similar installation in about a week.






Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

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