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Fourteen hours.
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?
Setting up my loudspeakers has been a ongoing adventure. First this wall then that. Pull them out, push them to the side. Raise or tilt them. Treat the walls to try to match the current placement. Listen, listen and then listen some more. Learn something new and try it all over. Enjoy getting better sound with some tweeks. Loving music more and more. So the answer to the Question is years to life.
I spent a number of weeks in my new home—and probably more than that in my old place. An inch or two one way or the other can make a huge difference. There is just one right place for the speakers to be and finding it can be frustrating, but well worth the effort.
Just a couple of minutes. Put 'em on stands and got 'em to face me and that's about it. I used to measure all the distances with a tape measure but I think I've got the hang of it now, so it's not all that critical. As long as they are on the same horizontal level, I'm good.
After receivong my new Von Schweikert VR4 SRIIs, I spent about 1.5 months moving them around until I found a placement that gave me what I was looking (listening) for. Something that made the moving around these 150 pound speakers easier was two sets of those furniture moving "sliders". Those things that are slippery plastic on one side. I could easily slide the speakers into a new position. Once I was satisfied, I placed the spikes.
I spent some time trying to place them around existing furniture to maximize performance and looks. It has slowly evolved with me bringing the speakers further out into the room. I now can also run my stereo set up with the subwoofer in this system.
I spent an afternoon adjusting the toe-in and distance from the front and side walls. After they had run in for several weeks I made some minor adjustments of the toe-in. After almost six months I tweaked placement and toe-in a final time. The effort was well worth it. My speakers sound great with both a wide and deep soundstage with great imaging and tight bass!
Six months. Moving them a little bit at a time, when I finally found the perfect spot I measured the distance of the back left edge and the back right edge from the back wall and the back outside edge from the side walls. I recorded the measurements in case the speakers move.