[Barry.B]

Hi All,

Is there an ideal toe in angle for PMC speakers?, mine are LB1's.
My local dealer advises aiming them towards your listening position until you can see approx 2" width showing on the speaker sides that are visual from your seat.

Aiming them in this way certainly makes them sound sharper and more focused, I have read that aiming them directly at the listening position may be a bit too much .  I will try this at a later date.

Is there also an ideal height for the tweeters from the floor.

I know these are basic procedures, but I was interested to know how other PMC owners had theirs set up.

Many thanks,

Regards,

Barry. B

[ryder]

Hi Barry,

The placement of my LB1 Sigs often change most of the time as I always like to experiment and get the best sound out of those monitors in my room. I have 16'' Target stands on them to bring the tweeter to ear level, as usual. I may get the PMC stands later after I sort out my front end. They are rather pricey though.

In my smallish room they are currently about 8' apart, 6' from the front wall and toed-in with the drivers shooting just directly behind the ears in nearfield. I find this placement to sound better than with Cardas speaker placement method which requires the speakers to be only 5' apart. I didn't measure the angle though as it's purely trial and error. I believe the placement will change again once I replace my linestage and/or amp.  Close placement to wall boundaries was made possible with room treatments on the front and side walls. What you have read may be right as aiming the drivers directly to your ears may result in a sound that's too forward. There was an article I read somewhere that suggested the speakers to aim just behind the ears, moving in small increments until you find the right angle that the sound is best to your ears. Have you tried moving them yet? They are not huge IB1's so I reckon it wouldn't be too difficult. I have a dedicated room.

[Barry.B]

Hi Ryder,

Thanks for your reply, my system is in our living room which is approx 22' long x 12' wide.  The speakers are approx 8' apart and 2' from the wall firing across the room.  The usual compromise with my dearest has been reached which means the LB1's are each side of our large sofa, so no there isn't much chance of moving them around.  Luckily my listening position is on the opposite wall bang in the middle of the speakers.

The stands are 10" Atacama's, so they could be higher - read compromise again. 

However, we are in the process of getting detailed planning permission to build a 5 bed house with double garage and "music room" in the basement (silly grins all round) on the plot of land we have recently purchased.  The size of the plot is approx 100' x 40' which is fairly piddling by Canadian/USA standards, but will allow us to hopefully do what we want.
It will be of the timber framed "house in a box" style, but as usual all depends on our "wonderful" local planning dept whether we get the OK for the basement, we will be somewhat "unamused" if they refuse us (words unrepeatable on this forum).

Sorry to wander OT a bit but I can't resist asking what is the ideal music room size (anyone????), I expect it's as big as possible!!!!

I hope you get your choice of linestage/amp sorted soon.

Regards,

Barry.B

[ryder]

My room size is 11.5' wide x 17' long. I think your room size is okay for the LB1's. They might struggle a bit to fill a room that's bigger.

[ryder]

Just an update. I knew this would happen.

Upgraded my line stage and now my LB1's have zero toe-in. The details of the cymbals and intensity of the upper drum notes are too much for my ears to handle even when they are toed-in slightly shooting across to my shoulders. All the sound of the instruments suddenly came forth with such intensity and distinctly separated from the vocals. This made me realize that my previous preamp is a piece of crap, and by toeing-in the speakers in fact ameliorated all the deficiencies.

Your mileage may vary.

[HPower]

Hey ryder,

I am glad you made this last post.

I also just got a new preamp (Modwright SWL 9.0, with tube rectified PS) and did not think
to play with the speaker location of my OB1's.
I have been trying not to be too critical in my listening until I am sure the SWL is well broken-in,
with the new style caps that Dan is now using, that might be as many as 300-400 hours from all reports.

I am liking what I am hearing for the most part, more detail and a little more dynamic with a fuller, deeper presentation.
What I am noticing is that those dreaded Sssss's (mostly in female voices) are also more pronounced.

I wonder if adjusting the toe-in might help me as well? 

[ryder]

Hi HPower,

I'm glad you posted too. I forgot to mention that I have also noticed the sssss in voices as well, not only in female but male voices too. It came to a point whereby I was thinking what to get rid of next to rectify the problem(speaker cables came to mind first) but just a simple twist of the speakers did the trick.

Speaker positioning cannot be overlooked at all times.

By the way, I've upgraded to the ARC LS-16.

[HPower]

Thanks ryder,

As I said, I am trying not to listen too closely right now but yes the ssss stand out in both male and female but you hear it
a little more with the ladies.
I have made a couple of changes to my system (probably a mistake to change more than one thing at the same time), as well
as the pre I ran some dedicated lines with Shunyata outlets and I am expecting 3 new Black Sand PCs to arrive in the next few days.
With the addition of the new preamp I needed another RCA  interconnect, which I picked up a 2nd hand Cardas Gold Ref.

Like you, I was thinking that I now need to change something else...
I was thinking about going to the source, my Musical Fidelity CD-Pre24 is now doing just CD playback and I was planning to eventually
upgrade it to something like a Rega Saturn or maybe a tubed Cary 303/300.

Hopefully this weekend I will have some quiet time to play around with the position on the OB1's... there is nothing better than a free upgrade.  aa

[ryder]

Moving those hefty OB1's is certainly not an easy task. It would most likely make a difference, and if things ain't going your way you may be heading in the right direction in looking at the upstream component. You won't get sibilant sounds from Cardas cables. FYI I'm using all Nordost cabling(Frey interconnects and SPM Ref. speaker cables) and can easily live with the added resolution. 

Maybe you should just wait till your Black sand PC's arrive and see if they would be able to tame down the dreaded sibilant and save you a couple of calories in lugging your speakers around. Sometimes it can be quite frustrating to do so much work and yet achieve nothing, unless you don't mind treating that as some sort of a workout. The end result can sometimes be rewarding if done right.

[Barry.B]

Hi Ryder,

Pleased to hear you've got your line stage sorted, what did you finally choose in the end?

Since my last post I've reverted to my original Foundation speaker stands which puts the base of the speakers 13" from the floor.  This has raised the tweeters up to about level with my ears.

The speaker toe in is now approx 15 degs which puts the crossover point well behind me in stead of my original no toe in.

The result is that although the bass has reduced somewhat (still bags of it), the soundstage has opened up even more (well past the speakers) and there appears to be more detail.  If I toe the speakers in so that the crossover is at a point just behind my head then I get a similar result to you, much too sharp and ssss's get too much.

The sound is now more balanced and listenable as before there was too much bass if there can be such a thing.

I'm waiting on a Squeeze Box 3 network streamer (when Amazon get their act together and send me it) to have a play with.  You never know, if it's as good as a lot of people say it "might" replace my Meridian G08 CDP, but it will have to go some to to that. 
Still it will be interesting to see how it performs.

Regards,

Barry.B

[ryder]

Hi Barry,

I've got the ARC LS-16 as my line stage.

It's good that you've reverted to the Foundation stands. Little surprised as I thought they come in standard 24". Not quite sure on your impression of getting too much bass from your previous setup though. If you have a subwoofer, high-passing the LB1's will yield substantial improvements. I find the LB1's, although a TL design which is supposed to have excellent bass response were struggling to reach the lower octaves with its 4" woofer. The inclusion of a sub bass system to the LB1's took off the strain from the power amp in driving the speakers, yielding a more effortless delivery from top to bottom with greater transparency and dynamics. Not to mention a much fuller deeper bass which adds to the fullness of the sound. 

I haven't heard of the Meridian G08 but I read that it's a fine unit. Now I've left with nothing to find fault of in my system. Maybe I should get something esoteric to replace my Krell KPS-30i later this year. 

[James Tanner]

Hi All,

Is there an ideal toe in angle for PMC speakers?, mine are LB1's.
My local dealer advises aiming them towards your listening position until you can see approx 2" width showing on the speaker sides that are visual from your seat.

Aiming them in this way certainly makes them sound sharper and more focused, I have read that aiming them directly at the listening position may be a bit too much .  I will try this at a later date.

Is there also an ideal height for the tweeters from the floor.

I know these are basic procedures, but I was interested to know how other PMC owners had theirs set up.

Many thanks,

Regards,

Barry. B

Hi Barry,

Sorry I missed this.
The recommended toe-in for PMC speakers is that a line drawn from the middle of the face of each speaker should intersect about 1 meter behind your head.

james

[Barry.B]

Hi James,

Thanks for your reply.

Regards,

Barry.B