Speaker placement

boomerfss

How close up to the wall can you place the speakers? (Monitor 70's fronts). They are very deep, so I would like them as close to the wall as possible.

Glowrdr

I would say you could almost place them directly on the wall. You will probably want to give them at least an inch or so - but you will be able to use trial and error for that. If they are too close to the wall, you might hear some port noise (highly doubtful though)

Tour2ma

Yup.. close as you want, but be mindful that where the fronts are vs. items around/ between them matters as well.

Move 'em forward/ back, in/ out and leave them where they sound best. The search is half the fun.

Enjoy...

comfortablycurt

As stated above, you can basically have them against the wall if you want...though you'd want to leave at least an inch or so of breathing room.

Even tiny adjustments in a speakers placement can have big effects on its sound. For instance, moving a speaker closer to the back wall will increase its bass output. However, this can sometimes be at the expense of soundstage coherency and midrange/high end clarity. Not always, but sometimes. Proper placement is very important. A cheap pair of speakers that's placed properly can sound fantastic, where as an uber high end pair of speakers can sound horrible if they're placed improperly. You've gotta find the happy medium.

The Monitors tend to perform quite well when they're close to the walls though.

One thing to bear in mind, is that in an ideal situation, anything that's in between the two speakers should be behind the baffle. For instance, if you have a TV in between the speakers, ideally you would want the front of the TV to be at least an inch or so farther back than the front of the speakers. Having objects in between, and in front of your speakers can greatly reduce soundstage coherency...and will greatly reduce your focused center image. This isn't an absolute rule, but it should definitely be taken into consideration.

Also play around with different amounts of toe in. Start with just a tiny amount of toe in...half an inch or so, and gradually keep moving it in. Once you get to a few inches or so of toe in, start slowly moving them back outward again, and find the happy medium. In general, an inch and a half to two inches of toe in is a fairly happy medium, but a lot of it is dependent on your specific room, seating arrangements, personal tastes etc...

I've found that it's best to make these adjustments with placement gradually over a period of days. Don't try half an inch of toe in, listen for a minute, then try a full inch, listen for a minute, go to one and a half etc... Try half an inch, then leave it that way for a day or two. Then go to a full inch and leave it that way for a day or two etc... Doing it this way lets you get a broader idea of how they're going to sound, over a wider range of material. Pick some demo material to try in each position...a couple favorite albums that you know very well, and some favorite scenes from movies.

The same method should be applied to setting the backwall spacing. Sometimes it can take a while to find the ideal placement...but the experimentation is half the fun. I've had my SDA 2A's for a couple years now, and I still play around with placement quite a bit.

boomerfss

Thanks guys. Just making sure I could have them close to the wall. The Onkyo amp has Audyssey auto eq for everything else (mic set-up). It seems to work really well.

Thanks for the pointers about having the speakers slightly in front of the tv (stand) as well.