Setting up Loudspeakers Correctly: The Practical Guide

There's a moment almost everyone who's ever bought speakers has experienced: They sounded great in the showroom. At home, they sound – different. Not necessarily bad, but somehow flat, boomy, or just not how you remembered them. Or you move, set up the same system in a new room, and suddenly nothing sounds right.

The good news: In most cases, it's not the speakers. It's where they're placed. And that's the best news of all, because the solution costs no money – just a little time and willingness to move furniture around.

We say this without exaggeration: If you take speaker placement seriously, you can often get more out of an existing system than through an expensive upgrade. And if you ignore it, you're giving away a significant part of what you paid for.

One more thing upfront, because we hear it almost daily: "My room is terrible." Roughly every second customer says that – and so do people with very elaborately built listening rooms. There is no perfect room. There are only rooms where speakers are placed well, and those where they are placed poorly. Your room is not a special case.

In this guide, we will cover:

• Why placement matters so much and what actually happens in the room
• The basic rules: wall distance, stereo triangle, symmetry, toe-in, listening position
• What to consider depending on the speaker type
• How to proceed systematically, step by step
• What to do if the room isn't cooperative
• When room acoustics and digital calibration become useful

Content

• Why placement matters so much
• What actually happens in the room
• The basic rules of placement
• Placement by speaker type
• How to proceed: the guide
• When the room isn't cooperative
• Room acoustics: if you want to go further
• Digital calibration: what it can and cannot do
• Common placement mistakes
• Conclusion
• FAQ

Why placement matters so much

In the hi-fi chain, you have almost everything under your control: source, amplifier, cables, speakers – all freely selectable, all comparable. Except for the last link. And that's your room.

Acoustically speaking, speakers and the room are not two separate things, but one. Sound waves come out of the speaker, and what happens to them is determined by the room – its size, its walls, its floor, its furniture. That's why the same speaker sounds different in two places, and why its position is not a minor detail, but a component of the system.

The magnitude of the effect surprises even those who expect it. In our listening room, we once listened to the same pair of speakers in three positions: against the wall, at a normal living room distance, and significantly further forward in the room. The difference was not subtle. Against the wall, the bass became muddy and imprecise, and details that were clearly audible before – such as fingers sliding over guitar strings – almost completely disappeared. Same speakers, same amplifier, same track. Only half a meter difference.

And another important clarification upfront: The perfect stereo triangle from the textbook exists nowhere. Two speakers, one listening position, all symmetrical – that exists in picture books and nowhere else in the world. Real rooms have windows, doors, radiators, furniture, passageways, and asymmetries. Placement is not about perfection, but about approximation. And that already brings a lot.

What actually happens in the room

You don't need a degree in acoustics to set up speakers well. But if you roughly understand what's happening, you suddenly listen more purposefully and stop experimenting blindly. So here are the most important relationships – as clearly as possible.

A speaker is not a flashlight

The usual speaker symbol with sound waves radiating forward is misleading. A speaker doesn't shine forward like a flashlight. Only the highest frequencies are truly directional. The lower the tone, the more it radiates all around – in the bass range, practically in all directions.

This means: Half the room is always involved. The sound goes back to the wall, to the side, to the floor, to the ceiling – and returns from there.

Reflections: The room responds

Everything hard reflects: walls, windows, stone floors, glass tables, cabinet fronts. What reaches the listening position is always a mixture of the direct sound from the speaker and countless reflections that arrive minimally later.

A simple self-test: Clap your hands loudly and listen to what the room does with it. In an anechoic chamber, you'd just hear a short pop. In a normal living room, you hear a lingering reverberation, sometimes a rapid flutter. That's exactly what happens with every single note of your music – only thousands of times superimposed.

Why some sounds disappear

Here's where it gets interesting. When direct sound and a reflection meet at the same point, it depends on how their waves are aligned. If they align, they reinforce each other – the sound becomes louder, often boomy in the bass. If they don't align, they partially cancel each other out – the sound becomes quieter or almost disappears.

This is no minor detail: Measurements in normal living rooms regularly show areas where entire frequency ranges drop by 10 decibels or more. Practically, this means: In some tracks, the bass is there and enjoyable, in the next track, nothing seems to happen. This is not due to the speaker or the amplifier, but because the exact frequencies of that song are canceled out at your listening position.

And it's not just about volume, but also about impact. If there's a lack of energy in certain areas, you no longer feel it – the music simply grabs you less.

Bass behaves like water

The most helpful analogy for the bass range: Think of water waves. Low notes have wavelengths of several meters; the higher the note, the narrower the waves become. And like water in a bathtub, the bass sloshes back and forth in the room, bounces between the walls, and overlaps with itself.

This leads to two things that are crucial for placement:

Room modes. Standing waves form between two opposing walls. In the middle of the room, this almost always leads to a strong cancellation at certain bass frequencies – and weaker cancellations at a quarter of the room's length. This applies to the length, width, and height of the room simultaneously. You can't magically eliminate these cancellations, but you can keep your distance from them. If you've ever walked around the room while listening to music and noticed the bass suddenly almost disappearing at one spot: That was exactly it.

The back wall cancellation. The bass also travels backward, hits the wall behind the speaker, and comes back – a little too late. This creates a cancellation whose position directly depends on the wall distance. This is the main reason why the distance to the back wall matters so much. The same thing happens again with the side wall.

And one you can't do anything about: A cancellation also occurs between the woofer and the floor. You can move the speaker as much as you want – that one remains. Good speaker developers take this into account during tuning.

The basic rules of placement

Now to practice. Important first: These are guidelines, not laws. Every room is different, and ultimately, your ear decides. But these points are a very good starting point – and much better than fumbling in the dark.

Symmetry: Measure, don't guess

The most underestimated point. Both speakers should be as precisely the same distance from the listening position as possible – and measured, not judged by eye.

Why it needs to be so precise: In the high-frequency range, wavelengths are very short. Even a few centimeters of offset visibly shift the center of the sound. We've measured this ourselves: Six centimeters of offset between left and right – completely inconspicuous to the eye – are clearly visible in the high-frequency measurement.

The annoying thing is that you don't see the error. You sit there, feel like the center isn't quite right, and can't find the cause. So: grab a tape measure. It's worth it.

At the same time, don't overdo it. You're sitting on a couch, you move, you don't sit in the exact same millimeter every evening. The goal is accurate to the centimeter, not to the millimeter.

The stereo triangle

The classic recommendation: The distance between the speakers and the distance to the listening position should be roughly the same – an approximately equilateral triangle. This is a good starting point from which you can experiment in both directions.

Set up too wide: The soundstage becomes larger, but voices are pulled apart and can no longer be precisely located. It sounds diffuse, and the center literally falls apart.

Set up too narrow: The soundstage shrinks, stereo barely works, everything sounds like it's coming from one point.

Between these extremes lies a range where it works – and exactly where you land in that range is also a matter of taste.

The wall distance: the most important adjustment screw

This is where the biggest leverage lies. And this is where most people make the mistake of placing the speakers directly against the wall because it looks tidier.

The rule of thumb that works surprisingly well: about one-fifth of the room length distance to the back wall. This is measured from the wall to the front edge of the speaker – where the drivers are located. How deep the cabinet is plays no acoustic role. In a five-meter long room, that would be about one meter.

This sounds like a lot, but it's more feasible than expected – and the difference is clearly audible. From the studio world comes an even more consistent variant with a one-third distance, which often works even better acoustically. However, this is rarely feasible in a living room.

And what you should definitely avoid: placing the speakers exactly in the middle or exactly at a quarter of the room's length. That's where the strongest cancellations occur.

Unequal distances to back and side walls

A tip that costs little and brings much: The distance to the back wall and the distance to the side wall should be different.

Visually, an equal distance to both sides usually looks best. Acoustically, it's the worst choice because the cancellations from the back and side walls then overlap at the same frequency and reinforce each other.

A ratio of about 5 to 8 has proven to be a good starting point – meaning one distance is significantly, but not extremely, larger than the other. This is incidentally the golden ratio, which is also considered particularly harmonious in optics. In acoustics, it works for entirely different reasons, but it works. Whether 5 to 8 or 8 to 5 is secondary. The main thing: not equal.

The listening position

The listening position is just as important as the speaker position – and often easier to change.

• Don't sit exactly in the middle of the room. That's where the strongest cancellations meet; the bass sounds thin and patchy.
• Don't sit directly against the back wall. That's where the bass accumulates, everything becomes boomy and imprecise.
• Moving a little further forward or backward already makes a significant difference. Try it out – a few handbreadths can be enough.
• You should sit centrally sideways, however, so that the distances to both speakers are equal.

Toe-in

Toeing in speakers – i.e., rotating them slightly towards the listening position – works in two directions: It improves localization and midrange imaging, and it simultaneously reduces the sound radiating directly against the side walls.

How much toe-in is applied is a matter of taste and depends on the speaker. Common approaches range from slightly angled to so much that the axes cross just in front of the listening position. Try both – you'll hear it immediately, and it costs nothing.

Tweeter at ear level

The tweeter should be approximately at ear level in the seated listening position. Too high or too low costs presence and clarity.

This is a point that's very easy to check: Listen to a familiar piece while sitting, then crouch down or stand up. The difference is usually strikingly clear.

Placement by speaker type

Floor-standing speakers

Floor-standing speakers come with their height, so the tweeter position is usually set. The crucial additional point here is the coupling to the floor.

A speaker that wobbles on a soft carpet transfers energy into the cabinet's movement instead of into the air – which costs bass precision. The solution depends on the subfloor:

• Spikes penetrate the carpet and establish firm contact with the floor.
• Decouplers and dampeners are often the better choice on hard floors – especially with wooden floorboards or floating floors, where firm coupling causes the floor to resonate.

What fits better is not a matter of belief, but a question of the subfloor – and you usually hear the difference clearly.

Bookshelf speakers

With bookshelf speakers, placement is even more crucial because the position is freely selectable – and therefore can also be freely wrong.

A speaker stand is not an accessory, but part of the speaker. It serves three purposes: It brings the tweeter to ear level, it keeps the speaker stable, and it decouples it from resonances of the subfloor. A good stand has mass – many can be filled with sand or granules.

When a shelf or cabinet is the only option

The classic we encounter again and again: bookshelf speakers in a shelf compartment or on top of a cabinet. Acoustically, this is not ideal for several reasons – the tweeter is usually significantly above ear level, the shelf walls create additional reflections close to the speaker, and the furniture resonates, which can make the bass sound muddy.

However: Sometimes it's the only option. No space for stands, no power outlet in the right place, children or pets in the house, or simply the agreement that the living room remains a living room. That's perfectly legitimate – and with a few targeted measures, it becomes a decent solution instead of a last resort:

• Decoupling is the most important lever here. A speaker placed directly on a shelf or cabinet top transfers its vibrations to the furniture – and the furniture resonates. Decouplers or damping feet between the speaker and the surface interrupt this. The effect is often greater with this type of placement than with any other, because the problem is most pronounced here.
• As far forward as possible. Place the speaker at the front edge of the shelf instead of further back. This significantly reduces reflections from the side walls and the back wall of the compartment.
• Choose the lowest sensible compartment. The closer the tweeter is to ear level, the better. If there's a choice between two compartments, take the lower one.
• Tilt downwards. If the speaker is significantly above ear level, tilting it towards the listening position helps – a wedge or a suitably shaped decoupler is sufficient for this. This brings the tweeter axis back in your direction.
• Don't clear out the compartment. Books and other objects next to the speaker act as natural diffusers and damping. A completely empty, smooth compartment is the worst option.
• Still pay attention to symmetry. If one speaker is on a shelf and the other is free next to it, that's less favorable than both on the shelf. Equal conditions for left and right take precedence.

With these tips, you can get an astonishing amount out of an unfavorable situation. And if you later find space for stands, you'll hear the difference clearly – you can also test this anytime by temporarily placing the speakers at ear level for a track.

Active or passive?

This makes no difference for placement. An active speaker obeys the same acoustic rules as a passive one. We address which type suits you in a separate article: Active or passive – which speakers are right for you?

What about the bass reflex port?

A question we often hear – and which is usually overrated. The reflex port is not there to direct sound in a specific direction. It extends the usable bass response of the speaker, so it functions more like an additional sound source.

Whether the port is located at the front or back is therefore less relevant for placement than many people think. The important thing is that it can "breathe" – a few centimeters of free space are usually enough for this. The real question remains the distance of the entire loudspeaker from the wall, and this applies to closed cabinets just as much.

And the Subwoofer?

Subwoofers have their own rules because they interact with the room differently than main speakers – corner placement, phase, crossover frequency, and the question of where in the room a good spot even is. That would go beyond the scope of this guide; you'll find a separate article on that topic: How to choose and set up your subwoofer correctly.

Here's how to proceed: the instructions

Feel free to take an afternoon for this. Most importantly: Always change only one thing and then listen. If you adjust five things simultaneously, you won't know afterwards what made a difference.

1. Choose the right music.
Start with a good old mono recording. It sounds strange, but it's the best test for center imaging: In mono, everything – voice, every instrument – must be precisely in the middle between the speakers, as if nailed down. If that's not right, don't even bother with anything else.

After that, take two or three recordings that you know inside and out. Even better: recordings where you know how they were made – some albums have recording videos, and if you've seen who was sitting where in the room, you'll know where you should hear the instruments.

2. Roughly position.
Both loudspeakers symmetrical to the listening position, approximately in an equilateral triangle, with distance to the wall. No fine-tuning yet.

3. Measure symmetry.
Tape measure or ruler: The distance from each speaker to the listening position should be equal. Now listen to a mono recording – is the voice centered and stable?

4. Explore the bass in the room.
A simple trick: Play a track with good, even bass and walk slowly through the room. You'll find spots where the bass almost disappears, and others where it booms. This gives you a feeling for where you'd better not sit – and where you might.

5. Vary wall distance.
Start with the one-fifth distance. Then try significantly closer and significantly farther away. Pay attention not only to the amount of bass, but especially to the precision: Is the attack of a bass drum dry and crisp, or does it become soft and muddy? More bass is not automatically better – a spongy bass often sounds "fuller" but is still worse.

6. Set unequal distances.
Once the wall distance is roughly set, ensure that the side wall distance is significantly different from the rear wall distance.

7. Experiment with toe-in.
Straight forward, slightly angled, more angled – listen to the same track each time. You'll hear the difference quickly.

8. Vary listening position.
If possible, move your seating position a bit forward or backward. Often this achieves more than further moving the speakers.

9. Fine-tuning.
Finally, work in small steps – a few centimeters make an audible difference in the treble. And then: just listen for a few days. Some things you only notice after living with them for a while.

When the room doesn't cooperate

Now for the honest part. Most people listen to music in the living room, not in a dedicated listening room. There's a sofa where it belongs, not where acoustics would prefer it. There are windows, doorways, a dining table, and in many cases, other people with their own ideas of what a living room should look like.

That's perfectly fine. A guide that demands you turn your home into a studio doesn't help anyone. The realistic approach is: get what you can.

The most important compromise: not directly against the wall

If you can only implement one thing, make it this. The leap from "directly against the wall" to "forty centimeters in front of it" is, in most rooms, the biggest audible gain you can get for free.

We've experienced this many times – even with people who had very good systems, whose speakers had gradually moved closer to the wall in everyday life because they were in the way. Moved forward a bit, listened to the same track again, and the reaction was always the same: "How did I listen to it like this all this time?"

If your speakers are heavy, casters or gliders can help you move them forward for listening and then back again.

Asymmetrical rooms

No living space is truly symmetrical – a window on the left, a shelf on the right, an opening to the hallway on one side. This is the norm, not the exception.

What you can still do:

• Set up the speakers symmetrically, even if the room isn't. Equal distances to the listening position are the most important thing.
• Optimize at least one side. If the one-fifth rule only works on the left, then do it right on the left. That's still better than having both sides wrong.
• Utilize unequal conditions instead of trying to visually force the room.

Furniture are your allies

A common misconception: furniture interferes with acoustics. The opposite is true.

Remember the water waves: What helps against sloshing waves? Something that breaks them up. That's exactly what sofas, armchairs, shelves, cabinets, and thick tables do in the bass range. An empty room is acoustically the worst room of all – everyone who has ever moved into an empty apartment and thought they could never listen to music there knows this. As soon as the furniture is in, it gets better.

For highs and mids, the same applies to soft materials: carpets, curtains, cushions, filled bookshelves. These are the most effective and cheapest acoustic measures available – and you probably already have them.

A beautifully furnished, homely room with a carpet and curtains often sounds better in practice than a technically optimized room. More on that in a moment.

Room acoustics: if you want to go further

If the setup is in place and you want even more, targeted acoustic measures come into play. Here, however, restraint is more important than enthusiasm – we have too often seen well-intentioned measures worsen the result.

Absorbers

Absorbers remove sound energy from the room. This is very effective in the mid and high frequency range, as our ears don't like reflections there.

The danger: over-damping. Absorber material is very effective and only in certain frequency ranges. Anyone who damps large areas without precise knowledge of their own problem can easily end up in a room that sounds dead and unnatural – and whose actual problem is still there.

Therefore, our advice: Start with curtains, carpets, and bookshelves before buying acoustic panels.

Diffusers

Diffusers don't remove energy, but rather break up and distribute sound. This can be very elegant – the most well-known application is the wall structures of large concert halls.

Again, every diffuser has a specific effective profile. You won't know how it affects your room until it's installed. If your dealer gives you some to try out, that's the best way.

Bass traps: Caution

Here we need to be very clear. The idea is tempting: it's booming, so I'll put a bass trap there, and the booming is gone.

Unfortunately, it rarely works that way. Every bass trap is effective in a certain frequency range – and if your problem lies elsewhere, it will remove bass that you needed and leave the actual problem intact. The result is then worse than before: the bass is missing, the boom remains.

Furthermore, many bass traps have little effect below about 80 Hertz – and in the true deep bass, room acoustic treatment is only possible with a very high effort anyway. And if only one of your two speakers causes a problem, it doesn't help to place something symmetrically on the left and right.

Our clear recommendation: Bass traps only if the problem has been measured beforehand. Otherwise, it's an expensive guessing game with poor chances.

The goal is not the studio room

One point often overlooked: Most of these materials come from the studio environment. There, the goal is a room with as few reflections as possible, to analyze recordings and find errors. This is a completely different goal than relaxed music listening in the evening.

Rooms with a lot of absorption and diffusion often sound analytical and unnatural – you hear the loudspeaker precisely, but it's not very enjoyable. Our hearing likes rooms that it understands. That's why a church or a concert hall can look terrible from a technical measurement perspective and still sound wonderful: the room has a believable character that you can listen into.

A homely room with carpet, curtains, shelves, and a sofa is therefore often a better starting point than one might think.

Because room acoustics are difficult to plan from a catalog, we offer personal advice on this – we look at your situation and tell you honestly if and where measures would be worthwhile. Often the answer is: first adjust the setup, then see further.

More about our consulting and installation →

Digital room correction: what it can and cannot do

There are devices that measure the room with a microphone and then specifically adjust the music signal. This has been standard in home cinema for decades. In the stereo area, it's more controversial – many music listeners don't want a device that "calculates around the music."

Therefore, here's a sober assessment.

What room correction cannot do: change the room. The glass surface reflects exactly the same way after correction as before. The name "room correction" is misleading in this respect.

What it can do – and that's an astonishing amount:

• Mitigate peaks. If a frequency is overemphasized at your listening position, the device can reduce the energy output of the speaker at that frequency. This reduces the problem. The bass becomes cleaner and less boomy.
• Compensate for differences between left and right. This is hardly possible with acoustic measures, but routine for a measurement system – and it noticeably improves center imaging.
• Work more precisely than the ear. A measurement system identifies problems more accurately than one can hear them.

What it can barely do: fill in cancellations. If two waves cancel each other out, adding more energy doesn't help – the speaker works harder, and still little happens. Some systems try it anyway; this is more harmful than helpful.

An important point regarding expectations: "Ironed out" is not the goal. Anyone who tries to straighten the frequency response with an equalizer will find that the result sounds bad. Good-sounding rooms – similar to how pleasant light has a certain color temperature – have a certain curve that is not linear. Systems that primarily advertise a perfectly straight diagram should be viewed with caution.

And the most important statement: A room correction does not replace the setup. It comes afterwards. Anyone who wants to electronically rescue poorly positioned loudspeakers is fighting against problems that could have been solved in ten minutes with their hands. Conversely, a room correction can help exactly where structurally and setup-wise nothing else is possible – and this is often the case in the living room.

We have devices with different measurement systems in our range, and they differ significantly in sound. Which one suits you depends on your room and your system – this can best be clarified in a conversation and in a direct comparison.

Typical setup mistakes

Placed directly against the wall. The most common and consequential mistake. Often results in more bass quantity, but significantly less precision – and costs details that are only missed once you hear them again.

Decided by aesthetics instead of sound. Equal distances to the back and side walls look good and are acoustically the worst choice.

Symmetry judged by eye. A few centimeters of offset shift the sound center. Measuring takes two minutes.

Sitting in the middle of the room. Precisely there is where the strongest bass cancellation occurs.

Bookshelf speakers placed undamped on a shelf. If there's no other way, it's doable – but then please with decouplers, far forward in the compartment, and on the lowest sensible shelf.

Set up too far apart or too close together. A huge soundstage sounds impressive until you realize the center is missing.

Changed everything at once. Anyone who changes position, angle, and listening position simultaneously learns nothing.

Confused more bass with better bass. Boomy bass initially feels powerful. No musician records in a way that is meant to be boomy.

Spent money on acoustic elements too early. First adjust the setup, then curtains and carpet, then buy something.

Invested in the system instead of the setup. A new amplifier changes less than half a meter of wall distance.

Conclusion

Setup is the only true free upgrade in HiFi. It costs nothing but an afternoon and the willingness to experiment – and in many living rooms, it achieves more than any equipment upgrade.

If you only remember four things, make them these:

1. Away from the wall. If possible, about one-fifth of the room length, measured from the wall to the front edge of the speaker.
2. Unequal distances to the back and side walls.
3. Measure symmetry, don't guess – and tweeters as close to ear height as possible.
4. Don't sit in the middle of the room and not with your back against the wall.

And then: listen, adjust, listen again. Only one thing at a time.

The rest – acoustic elements, room correction – comes afterward, not before.

We also made videos about this

We dedicated ourselves to this topic twice in front of the camera: once as a detailed workshop on room acoustics and setup, and once as a practical test where we listened to and measured the same speakers in three different positions. If you'd rather hear the effect than read about it, this is the right place. Feel free to check them out.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do my new speakers sound different at home than in the store?

Because the room is part of the system. The same speakers behave differently in every room – different dimensions, different walls, different furniture, different position. Usually, the speaker is perfectly fine and the setup is not yet optimal. Before you consider returning it, take an afternoon to rearrange things. In most cases, the problem will be solved then.

How far should the speakers be from the wall?

As a starting point, about one-fifth of the room length has proven effective, measured from the wall to the front edge of the speaker. In a five-meter long room, that would be about one meter. Just as important: The distance to the side wall should be significantly different from the distance to the back wall – a ratio of about 5 to 8 is a good starting point. Directly against the wall is almost always the worst solution.

How far apart should the speakers be and how far away should I sit?

An approximately equilateral triangle is a good starting point: The distance between the speakers roughly corresponds to the distance to the listening position. From there, you try in both directions. Too wide sounds diffuse and the center falls apart, too narrow leads to a loss of spaciousness.

Should I toe in the speakers?

In most cases, yes. Toe-in improves localization and simultaneously reduces the sound radiating against the side walls. How much is a matter of taste and depends on the speaker – from slightly angled to axes that cross just before the listening position. Try both with a familiar piece, you'll hear the difference quickly.

My bass is booming – what can I do?

In order: First, increase the wall distance and set unequal distances to the back and side walls. Second, move the listening position – not in the middle of the room, not directly against the back wall. Third, furniture: sofas, shelves, and armchairs effectively break up bass waves. Only when all of this has been exhausted is it worth considering acoustic measures or digital room correction. And when judging, focus on precision rather than quantity – boomy bass initially sounds like more, but it is less.

My room is asymmetrical – is that hopeless?

Not at all. No living space is truly symmetrical, not even professional listening rooms. It's important that the speakers are symmetrical to the listening position, even if the room isn't. And if a rule can only be implemented on one side, implement it on that side – that's still significantly better than nothing.

I can't place the speakers freely – what now?

Then, prioritize the feasible options in this order: If you can only implement one thing, create some distance from the wall – even forty centimeters make a significant difference. After that: optimize the listening position, measure symmetry, test the toe-in, and bring the tweeters to ear height if possible. If only a shelf or cabinet is an option, use isolators under the loudspeakers, place them far forward in the compartment, choose the lowest sensible compartment, and tilt them towards the listening position. For heavy loudspeakers, castors can help so they can be moved forward for listening and then pushed back. And utilize your furniture – it works for you.

Do I need acoustic elements like absorbers or bass traps?

Usually not as a first step. Curtains, carpets, filled shelves, and upholstered furniture are effective, inexpensive, and create a homely atmosphere. Caution is advised with purchased elements: Absorbers are very strong and can easily lead to an over-damped, unnaturally sounding room. Bass traps should only be used if you have previously measured your low-frequency problem – otherwise, they often remove exactly the bass you need and leave the actual problem unresolved. A studio room is also not the goal: For relaxed music listening, a comfortably furnished room usually sounds better.

Can digital room correction replace speaker placement?

No. Room correction does not change the room itself – but it can specifically reduce excess energy where it builds up and compensate for differences between the left and right speakers. This often has a significant effect. What it can hardly do is fill in cancellations. Used correctly, it is a very good addition – especially where placement reaches spatial limits. But it comes after placement, not before.

Do you want to know what's possible in your room?

Placement is a topic where a conversation often yields more than any guide – because every room is different and because the interesting questions are usually practical: What do I do with the sloped ceiling? Where should the sofa go? Is room correction worthwhile in my case?

Tell us about your room – dimensions, where the system is located, what is fixed and what can be moved. We will go through it together and honestly tell you where the biggest lever lies. Very often the answer is: free and implementable today.

And if you would like to listen to speakers with us: Please register one or two days in advance. Then we can set up and position everything correctly – because that is exactly what this article is about. A speaker that is quickly placed anywhere does not show what it can do.

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Author: Eric Schmidt