Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
An hour. I have a living room, not a listening room, and some things are sort of predetermined by room layout. That said, my system isn't very picky.
Getting the right components is half the battle. The other half is setting them up for maximum effect. How much time did you spend placing your loudspeakers?
A few minutes (just for moving the boxes, of course); ideal position was determined after many hours of listening, which happened for the song listening pleasure not for fine tuning. I need to make RT60 measurements with my spectrum analyser (a quite expensive measurement equipment) to place loudspeakers more precisely for a RT60 value of around 0.35-0.40 seconds for my listening position. I need a long holiday (going a little bit nuts as a result of boredom), a bottle of single malt (for making the things easier) and an empty home (for my family not to think that I am going nuts) for doing that. Surely a lot of measurements and a lot of time.
I spend about 30 minutes maximum, I know where I want them to be, and just make sure they're away from side walls, out enough from the back wall for the bass to be right, and I'm done. Oh yeah, equal distance from my seat, too.
Actually moving the speakers? Cumulatively probably about a couple hours for every new speaker over its lifetime. But when you factor in thinking obsessively about placement issues every time I sit down to listen to music and trying to figure out the next spot to move the speakers to ... forever.
In the beginning, I spent so much time placing my speakers. When I found the placement I liked I decided to see if there was any correlation to the size of the room and wouldn't you know, they were exactly at the 5th division of the room dimensions. I've used this placement in two rooms so far and have been very happy with the results.