Bookshelf speakers in horizontal position

AJM1981

Well-known member
From historical pictures of a certain brand I've seen a few examples of bookshelf speakers that started off in horizontal mode.

A while ago I read about a producer mentioning his monitors sounded slightly dull in treble and solved this by placing them horizontal with the tweeters outwards which improved the overall sound a lot and got the treble right.

Now it should be noticed that some monitors / speakers might do better than others. And also in terms of measurements it might not be ideal, but in terms of a change and judging by personal preference it is an option.

I tried my secondary pair of small bookshelves upstairs horizontally, it doesn't look weird, and I like the sound for a change. It's a slightly different perception and might keep it this way for a while.

Maybe one to try at home. :)
 
The better designs have pretty uniform dispersion in horizontal and vertical planes, so will sound similar either way. The more the dispersion differs, the bigger the change.
In the late 1970s I had four Acoustic Research speakers for Quadrophonic replay. The rear pair were on different height bookcases, so I used one vertical and the other horizontal!
 
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Deleted member 116933

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There’s a certain reviewer out that will turn most bookshelves up side down as part of his Review process. And he thinks a good deal of them sound better this way.
 
There’s a certain reviewer out that will turn most bookshelves up side down as part of his Review process. And he thinks a good deal of them sound better this way.
Mission still design that way, don’t they? I dug out my old 760i speakers during lockdown and they still sound decent. A bit coloured and hollow but something essentially musical about them that still evades some designs. Most definitely enjoyable.
 
Loudspeakers work best the way they’re designed to work - usually standing upright. This is because of a loudspeaker’s dispersion characteristics - they’re more uniform to our ears when the drivers are in a vertical line. This is why the usual horizontal MTM centre speakers (mid / treble / mid) are wrong. They’re fine if you listen within a relatively narrow angle from the central sweet spot, but once you get too far, uniformity drops off fairly quickly. These types of speakers should really be used standing up on their end, so the drivers are all vertical, which produces a much more uniform output over a wider area. This is also why you’ll see some Centre speakers adopting the TMM layout (treble / mid / mid), as it is more uniform than the MTM layout, sounding better over a wider area.

Speakers using a single driver, like Eclipse, can be placed through 360 degrees and they’ll sound exactly the same, obviously. Two-way dual concentric / coaxial speakers from the likes of KEF and Tannoy will also work throughout 360 degrees - these and single driver loudspeakers have completely uniform output through 360 degrees - up, down, sideways, diagonally etc.

Once you add a separate mid/bass driver, that will be lost, but some loudspeakers come closer to retaining a “point source” reproduction than others. Amphion use a low 1.6kHz crossover point between the HF unit and mid/bass unit, meaning more of their output emanates from the waveguide, which itself produces a uniform output, as above. Most loudspeakers have a crossover point between 2kHz and 5kHz, and generally, the higher it is, the more detectable it is, and can cause any number of issues if not executed correctly. Speakers like Amphion can be used very successfully on their side, as it doesn’t change the sound very much at all.

With multiple driver loudspeakers, it’ll come down to driver integration - creating a smooth hand off from one driver to the other. The more successfully this is done, the less you’ll be able to notice individual drivers when listening.
 

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