[audiotom]

I was looking through the acoustic circle and found the following series of articles on Master Set speaker placement.
I have my speakers set up via the equalateral Cardas nearfield method.

Master set seems to soundpressure the room evenly and enhances the sweet spot dramatically

One discription likened it to focusing binoculars 
1) adjust the two lenses/head to get a single image
2) focus on subject
3) adjust the adjustable lense to your eye for complete focus

Master set
1) set up mono image (speakers not too far apart)
2) set anchor speaker by bass tones to find most bass and avoiding room resonance
3) adjust the other speaker to the anchor to create resonantless bass and solid vocal

I may experiment this weekend on my HT3s

the idea behind it
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=64320.0

the steps
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=64321.new

[audiotom]

here is someone's experience performing the master set

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=65908.0

have to love audiocircle

[kingdeezie]

I haven't tried it with Salks, but I did try it with my speakers.

It is a very ardous process, and I never felt like I nailed it down perfectly.

I am sure that if you have a lot of experience with doing it, you know exactly what to listen for, and exactly when you should be stopping and continuing looking for better positioning.

In the end, the proposed ability to be able to ditch expensive room treatments post master set that some people tote is completely the opposite of my experiance.

YMMW, but I was extremely excited about doing this to my speakers, and never felt I really got the result that they were describing.

Of course both threads here were done with the help of people who are trained to do it properly, so that obviously would change the outcome.

Good luck.

[audiotom]

I don't buy the "lack of room treatments" either but will try it out to see what I can find

the Salks image so well - if thre is more to fine tune  I'd like to attempt to hear it

that said I'm leaving tape marks where my current setup is.

[Saturn94]

I didn't have much luck following some of the various placement "rules/procedures".

I posted this sometime back in another thread that might interest you.

I've owned my HT2-TLs since mid Feb 2011 and am still tweaking their position (not very fun to do considering how heavy they are).  Up until now it seems I've been having trouble getting my HT2-TL's to "disappear" in the soundstage and really open up to my satisfaction (my ADS L1290's easily disappeared in a very open sounding soundstage).

I do have placement/seating limitations, especially how far out into the room I can place speakers; about 30" max from the front of the speaker to the wall behind them, which places them about 8ft from my prime listening position.  So I'm pretty much limited to playing with speaker width and toe in.

I started by placing the HT2-TLs in the same position as the ADS, but I wasn't entirely happy with that.  Some here suggested limited or no toe in.  This seem to help a little, but still not there.  I tried more aggressive toe in, but still not satisfied.  I tried some formula I found about listening distance in relation to how far apart to place the speaker.  The results were good, but not great.  I was beginning to think they just weren't going to open up that much in my room (dang room ) and by mid May settled on having them 7ft apart (center to center) with 1.25" toe in and 8ft from my listening position.  They sounded pretty good in this position, but I can't say I was thrilled with them.

Last month I heard a setup at the Capitol Audiofest that I really enjoyed.  It was a pair of monitors that were set up pretty wide with quite aggressive toe in.  I would have thought that such aggressive toe in would produce great imaging, would would limit the width of the soundstage and have a very narrow sweet spot.  But in this case the result was a very wide/open soundstage with great imaging and a wide sweet spot/area.  I just figured it must have to do with that particular speaker design and drivers used.

I was thinking about this setup the past few days and wondered if the result wasn't so much the speaker design/drivers as it was the wide stance combined with aggressive toe in.  So tonight I spread the HT2-TLs apart as much as I could (8.5ft center to center) and pointed them directly at the center seating position 8ft away (this resulted in 4 inches of toe in).  This certainly was visually appealing as it opened up the space between the speakers and with the aggressive toe in the sides of the speaker are no longer visible from the center seat, making them visually slimmer/less obtrusive.  I put on some of my favorite CDs, including the great sampler that came with the Salks , and was quite surprised at what I heard; a wide/open soundstage while maintaining great imaging and a bit wider sweet spot.  The speakers also "disappear" better into the soundstage.  Now this is more like it!

Everything I've played so far sounds great.  Time will tell, but I think I might have finally found my HT2-TL's sweet spot in my room.

The moral of this story?  Sometimes the best tweaks are free and as much of a pain it may be, keep experimenting with speaker position and forget about the "rules".

[fsimms]

Master Set

Audiotom, I wrote my experience with the Master Set procedure with HT1s on the last page of the third link you posted.  I also used the Master Set procedure in my SS10 review.

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=86244.0

After I wrote the review I pulled the speakers further out in the room for few months and have since put them back closer to the wall but haven’t redone the Master Set procedure.

Bob