[kevin360]

Hey Hasse, that looks a bit like my setup. My 3.7s are approximately 7'4" off the front wall and spaced 7'9" apart (tweeter to tweeter) - the latter is dictated by a screen that drops behind/between them. They are 3'3" from the side walls and I sit 13'1" from the plane of the speakers and that precise distance from the wall behind me. The toe angle places my listening position ever so slightly off axis (the rays intersect a couple of feet behind me). The tweeters are on the inside. The subs are in the corners at the front of the room. There is diffusion on the front wall and a few absorption panels toward the center of the sides. There is also a bit of absorption in the center of the front wall which covers a window forced upon me by building code - argh!

It seems to work very well, but so did the sideways and Rooze arrangements.

[medium jim]

I've read this any many other threads about how to position Magnepan's, as well as, seating positions.  The take away for me is to make the room a non factor, i.e., to get the room as neutral, as this will allow the Magnepan's do their thing. That means some room treatments might be required, diffuse on the front wall and absorption on the side walls at the first reflection point.

Proper head height is also important. I find that the ears should be at the middle of the panels or slightly above as this will give the listener the proper instrument placement.

Jim

[Pryso]

In reading about general room acoustics and speaker placement, I've seen the recommendation to provide at least a 10 millisecond delay between direct sound from the speakers and reflected sounds from the room.  This delay improves clarity by reducing smearing from the reflected sounds when they reach the ear too quickly.  Fortunately this equates to approximately 10' distance in sound travel to make calculations easy.

Thus many set up guides recommend speaker placement away from sidewalls such that the distance from the drivers to sidewall and then reflected to the listener's head is 10' or more greater than the direct sound path from drivers to the listener's head.

Considering this principle for Maggies, or any dipole speaker, it would follow that they should be placed at least 5' out from the front* wall.  Thus the sound waves from the back of the speakers will travel at least 10' further than those projected from the front by the time they travel to the wall and are reflected back again.  Of course total reflected distances greater than 10' can be utilized for front and sidewall placements when the room is large enough.

For anyone with a room such as mine who cannot utilize this 10 ms delay by placement, absorption panels should be utilized at the reflection points.  Unfortunately I don't have a formula to suggest what and how much absorption substitutes for each foot which must be compromised.  Trial and error is necessary.

Recommendations by Jim Smith** and several posters here seem consistent with this 10 ms rule.

* Some refer to the wall behind the speakers as the back wall, but how does that relate to the person making the description?  And what would they then call the wall behind their (the listener's) head?

** Author of "Get Better Sound" and former employee of Magnepan. 

 

[SteveFord]

You forced me to get out the tape measure and I found my 3.7s nearly 5' out from the front wall with some thin drapes behind them.
I just kept moving them around until they sounded right and pretty much nailed it by ear.
That "Get Better Sound" is a good read.

[medium jim]

You forced me to get out the tape measure and I found my 3.7s nearly 5' out from the front wall with some thin drapes behind them.
I just kept moving them around until they sounded right and pretty much nailed it by ear.
That "Get Better Sound" is a good read.

Truer words have never been said!

Jim

[josh358]

Just wanted to add that as Medium Jim pointed out, diffusion is a popular front wall treatment. Diffusion has the effect of making the room acoustically larger and so is ideal for those who can't pull their speakers out (the soundstage keeps getting bigger until they're at least 15' from the wall, what you're doing is the same as adjusting the predelay on an artificial reverb). It works on the first reflection points of the side walls too, but a QRD diffuser can't be used closer than 8' or so, so it may be necessary to use another approach.

The Rooze configuration can also delay early reflections and create the sense of a much bigger acoustical space.

Absorption will produce a drier, what's on the master tape acoustic. Those who listen to smaller ensembles sometimes prefer it. Unfortunately, because it relies on room reflections, two channel stereo doesn't allow you to set up a room to suit all recordings.

[Pryso]

Thanks Josh.  I shouldn't have ignored diffusion in my post since that is an alternative to absorption.  But I was trying to keep my comments brief since I can prattle on if I don't watch myself.

[josh358]

I know the feeling.

[kevin360]

Took them to the nines! I'm trying out a new arrangement today, and it's a winner for solitary listening. I haven't tried any of the other seats yet, but...(how much do I care?). My 3.7s are now positioned 9' out from the front wall and 3'7" from the side walls to the center of the panels. I'm sitting 9' from the plane of the speakers, which places me 18' from the front wall and 15' from the wall behind me. I had to back my subs down a bit and tweak the phase, but the bottom end sounds a bit more even.

There's something about getting up close and personal with these planars. I have a pair of heavily modified MMGs (paired with REL Q150 subs in a semi-hybrid) in the bedroom and I can almost reach them with my feet from my listening chair. They sound amazing! I'm now sitting 4' closer to my 3.7s and I'm fairly convinced that's a very good thing. 

[satie]

Kevin

My recent experimentation with the HK/Limage positioning convinces me that you can do better yet by pulling the speakers further into the room than your 9' so far. Since you have some seating flexibility with your back rows IIRC, then you may accomodate that positioning better than in my room where the "ideal" spot happened to face less than 1' from more than one large piece of furniture and where my rack juts out 4' into the room and had to be acoustically "hidden" by absorptive "walls". Once the rack was taken care of, the "big violin" issues disappeared and it was back to rather precise imaging on a large and significantly deeper soundstage. The most impressive thing is how explicitly brass and woodwinds groups separate out  on big band recordings into their separate rows and individual positions.

In your room, it should be worthwhile to start at 11-12' from the front wall with the tweeters in, no toe in at all, and the speakers pushed as far apart as your slanted ceiling allows. you then pull the speakers forwards incrementally. Your seat should be roughly 9' from the back wall.

I am now working on a Rooze setup. But it looks like a bass 1/4 room plane wave setup with a Rooze placement for mid/tweeter is also worth trying since the "virtual speaker" can only be projected onto specific portions of my sidewalls that I cleared about 8' from the front wall. and in order to get the 4.5' wide  tympani aimed correctly they are heading into too close a position towards the center of the room.

[kevin360]

Ah my friend, if only I owned a room free from constraints. Who doesn’t long for that? 9’ is not only pushing the limits of my speaker cables, but it places the right speaker just behind the force of air from the handler on that side wall. Now I wish I had located it further back, but… The problem with building something is that one has to have a plan, and plans have a way of limiting the degree of change possible. The air handler had to go somewhere and it’s near the limit of the stock plumbing.

I thought out the original plan pretty heavily and checked the parameters for problems using various calculators. This system also includes video – my move forward plants me directly underneath a Runco RS1100. I haven’t turned it on yet, but I probably will tonight and I’m curious if the noise it emits will be bothersome in closer proximity.  I ordered speaker cables in a length that I figured would give me plenty of wiggle room. I guess I erred in that calculation as well. They weren’t exactly cheap, either. I’m also not a fan of having speaker cables longer than 12’.
 
The good news is that my chairs are fairly light and easy to move, but the ‘row’ behind me is a sofa on a platform that’s built on (nailed to) the subfloor. I have an idea for a way to build it out a bit, while installing a network drop and AC outlet in its new forward face.  That will permit me to build a better (bigger) countertop than my first go (made worse by my commission of a measuring screw-up). There are several areas in which improvements appear relatively guaranteed by a few alterations.
 
Anyway, my point is that I’ve taken this concept about as far as my room permits. I can’t get any closer to the rear wall than 13’. I’m sitting just behind the center of the room - just moved further away from the back wall.  As such, it’s very, very good. I’m becoming more and more of a fan of close proximity. I’m listening to Omnia ‘Crone of War’ right now and it’s damn near impossible to concentrate on what I’m typing…oh, wait, it’s ‘The Bold Fenian Man’ (makes my Irish heart ‘melt’)… What was I saying? Oh yes, I may play with some ‘unusable’ positions, but this is positively enchanting!

[lazydays]

I agree 

been sorta contemplating about getting a pair of 1.7's. Problem is the room is screwed up no matter how you place them. I can get them completely open at the rear (six or seven feet behind them, but have some issues at the sides (Less than 2.5 feet). The listening position will end up being about ten feet away max, and probably closer to eight feet. Then they will be about seventy inches apart (inside edges). Should I set them up this way, what will I loose in sound quality?
gary

[SteveFord]

I have my 1.7s five foot out from the front wall and sit about 12' back - it sounds just fine.
This is the bedroom system which is a converted attic so this is the best placement I could achieve.  Works for me.

[rw@cn]

Steve,

Have you tried sitting closer?

Bob

[rollo]

Jonathan Valin also recommended that the Magnepans should not be placed too widely apart as this would weaken midbass impact and image focus.
How far away from the panels is your listening position? I am about 13 feet away from my 3.7´s, don´t like near field listening with large panels.

   Sorry for the late reply was on vacation. We sit about 10 fet away with the speakers 5'-6" apart, tweeters on the outside.  Using Arion HS 500 hybrid class "D" mono blocks [ 1000W into 4ohm/ch ] or an Audio Research DR 250 servo mk2 amps [ 240W triode bliss ].
  Rear wall is dead with RPG diffussors at side and rear walls.

[SteveFord]

The lens distorts that photo. 
I sit 12' away which is just fine.

[kevin360]

Silly me, I wasted 27 months. If I had only taken Satie's advice and merged it into the constraints my room presents, I could have spent the last two and a quarter years enjoying the benefits of the Limage arrangement, or an approximation thereof. It only cost me a little time and could be undone easily enough, so I have no excuse for not trying it in April of 2012.   My room no longer has speakers and my speakers are no longer bound by a room.

I played with the Rooze setup a while back and found it incredible, if a little extreme at times. The arrangement was impractical for my room, but I really liked it. It seemed like a nutty idea until I tried it. There's a lesson in that which I was slow to absorb. The Limage setup violates a few assumptions of mine, so I wrote it off - without trying it (also, partly because I assumed it would be as impractical as the Rooze).

I was wrong. I was very, very wrong. The bizarre thing is that this arrangement has the potential to create a soundfield as vast as the Rooze, but with specificity and the scale varies with the material - such that it seems 'right' with everything. I've also noticed that I can turn my head all sorts of ways and the sound barely changes. These speakers never cease to amaze me. For a speaker that has a reputation of being difficult to place in a room properly, I sure have found a lot of positions that put a smile on my face.

Get perpendicular and close - you may just find it intoxicating.

[jimdgoulding]

I have something for you to try.  Anyone, actually, and dunno how this plays with Mags specifically, but, moving your seat to and fro can serve some recordings very well.  Take classical music made on location.  Moving my seat nearer to the plane of the speakers its as tho I moved a few rows nearer to the stage.  The orchestra expands.  There seems to be more space between the instruments.  The orchestra seems to curve more around my seat.  Doing the opposite yields the opposite and on some recordings this is preferred.  This is why I have a marker on the floor in front of my chair.  I listen to chamber music one way and full orchestra or opera another.  Just adds more realism from my memory of hearing music live.

[kevin360]

Well Jim, I have moved my chair about in the past. I haven't done it since changing the chairs for something more substantial (not really mobile). Although the room is dedicated to its entertainment purpose, it must serve two modes of entertainment. After experimenting with moving my chair about, I concluded that I preferred a distance that was achievable by moving my speakers a couple of feet further from the front wall (which was achievable because I could reroute my speaker cables for a more direct path). Happily, that netted far more than the benefit of 'idealized' imaging; the bass response, for instance, smoothed appreciably. The second half of the preceding movements is far more important to Maggie owners than to those with drivers in boxes.

We must return to the concept of 'idealized' imaging. In truth, I enjoyed the time my speakers spent anchored at a little over 9', with the manufacturer's recommended toe angle (well, close - there are other seats / I'm not always alone). Using a close approximation of such authoritative recommendations and some textbook math, the spatial relationships at which my speakers have been anchored for a while have produced the best imaging I had yet to experience with them. The most immense imaging (the sound was literally everywhere) was via the Rooze, but it pretty much expanded everything equally. Although, that was very entertaining, it was so to a comical level with things that needed to sound as if they occupied a specific location in space.

What I'm continuing to experience with the HK/Limage setup is an astonishing appropriateness of scale with every bloody thing to which I've listened since moving my speakers. This actually happened in two stages. The first rule which I took to be inviolable was that Maggies require a certain distance, as a minimum, from the side walls. Moving from 3' to 1.5' did expand the soundstage somewhat, but what caught my ear even more was the frequency balance, but I had increased the toe angle in accordance with Magnepan's dictum. That's when I decided to eliminate the toe angle and plant my 3.7s as close to the sidewalls as my ceiling shape permits - and perpendicular.

I expected this arrangement to be very short lived. My expectation has inverted. I feel no compulsion to move my seat for improved imaging. I cannot imagine better imaging, and I know I've never heard better. The truly amazing thing is that I haven't discovered the price yet - usually something comes at the expense of something else, but that doesn't appear to be the case with this arrangement. I'm aware that this is the drooling praise that spawns incredulity, but it's my honest assessment. I removed the tape from my floor - the speakers are staying right where they are (defying rules I once honored). I'm thoroughly addicted to this arrangement - long may it live!
 

[SteveFord]

Kevin,
Post a pic, would you, please?