Getting Speaker Stands Level

[Dom]

Yes, Im serious about this hobby. My brother who writes music, was using a lousy KAM amp and speaker system. So I decided that at christmas and birthday that I would upgrade his system, although it was blind I would choose good components.

MS 902i's standmounts, Cyrus 6XP amplifier and a not so fine NOS 8x TDA Silver Crown DAC. Some very thick 6mm 770 strand speaker cable, my old Merlin interconnects, Chord optical cable, and upgraded his mains cables too.

Whilst he doesn't share my enthusiam in mains cables, he acknowledges that his system sounds great, infinitly better than the KAM, I think he especially likes his Cyrus amp, and who wouldn't, It's RRP was £920 back in the day.

He will get his music computer back from the repair shop soon and start building tracks. With the new system they should sound even better. I am suggesting to him use more dynamics in his music, with 90 to 120Db's of range he should try to incorperate really quiet sounds with plenty of space.

I might post music tracks here for your opinions and I can't think of a better place to do it.

 

[davedotco]

I found this diagram yesterday, it gives a graphic version of what I was trying to explain.

The top diagram is the important one, you can see how the axis of the sound is angled downwards, so a relatively small increase in the height of the listener can make a substantial difference.

It is also important to understand that this issue is particularly severe around the crossover frequency, in most modern designs about 3kHz. This may not sound all that high a frquency, given that hi-fi sound is supposed to cover 20Hz to 20kHz but it is high enough for variations to cause a speaker to sound 'bright' or a bit 'dull'.

In a more general sense, getting the crossover right is always very important, particularly as in most designs it is in a critical area frequency wise. It is worth remembering that the reason many speakers sound bright is the bass driver sounding off a frequencies at or a little above the crossover, thats right, many speakers sound bright because of issues with the bass driver, not the tweeter.

 

[Al ears]

I found this diagram yesterday, it gives a graphic version of what I was trying to explain.

The top diagram is the important one, you can see how the axis of the sound is angled downwards, so a relatively small increase in the height of the listener can make a substantial difference.

It is also important to understand that this issue is particularly severe around the crossover frequency, in most modern designs about 3kHz. This may not sound all that high a frquency, given that hi-fi sound is supposed to cover 20Hz to 20kHz but it is high enough for variations to cause a speaker to sound 'bright' or a bit 'dull'.

In a more general sense, getting the crossover right is always very important, particularly as in most designs it is in a critical area frequency wise. It is worth remembering that the reason many speakers sound bright is the bass driver sounding off a frequencies at or a little above the crossover, thats right, many speakers sound bright because of issues with the bass driver, not the tweeter.

This was partly why I was suggesting some speakers do not require being perfectly level but, in some cases, angled backwards if the correct height stand cannot be found.

 

[davedotco]

It will depend on whether the speaker design compensates for this issue, some do, some don't.

There have been a fair number of speakers over the years that have required tilting, such as Audio Physic, whose 'Step' model was always a favourite of mine.

Others, most notably the Spica models used baffles that were tilted, but for all kinds of reasons these designs were not popular. The Spica TC50, say

 

[Al ears]

Probably because you only get half a box with those Spicas. ;-)

 

[Dom]

I found this diagram yesterday, it gives a graphic version of what I was trying to explain.

The top diagram is the important one, you can see how the axis of the sound is angled downwards, so a relatively small increase in the height of the listener can make a substantial difference.

It is also important to understand that this issue is particularly severe around the crossover frequency, in most modern designs about 3kHz. This may not sound all that high a frquency, given that hi-fi sound is supposed to cover 20Hz to 20kHz but it is high enough for variations to cause a speaker to sound 'bright' or a bit 'dull'.

In a more general sense, getting the crossover right is always very important, particularly as in most designs it is in a critical area frequency wise. It is worth remembering that the reason many speakers sound bright is the bass driver sounding off a frequencies at or a little above the crossover, thats right, many speakers sound bright because of issues with the bass driver, not the tweeter.

Ok, thanks. I think I know that speakers express the 3Khz area, as thats where the ear is most sensitive.