Yesterday was an interesting day - I actually had an hour or so with nothing going on, so I was listening to some music in my room and decided to play with my speaker positioning to try and improve the soundstage. It was good from the edge of the left Aeriel across to the edge of the right, but there wasn't much of anything going on outside them. The first thing I did was move them out from the front wall about an inch, and then I took off about half of the toe-in. I sat back and called up track 13 - Brown Eyes - from Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album. . . WOW! Those small changes made a world of difference. I had a solid soundstage that extended out to the side walls of the room without losing any of the solidity already present between the speakers. Now, THIS is what I'd been wanting to hear. A little more critical listening showed that there was a bit of a left bias to the sound (slightly weaker to the right) so I moved the right Aerial out another inch from the back wall. A little more listening showed that this leveled things out nicely. Got the masking tape out and put silhouettes on the carpet so I could get back to those positions and then kept moving and listening. It turned out that I'd found the "best" spots there at the beginning, but I wanted to be sure.
As it turned out, simple, tiny movements of 1 inch for one speaker and 2 inches for the other, and then playing with the toe-in made a major (to me at least) difference. Playing with speaker positioning can be a pain depending on your speaker - my Aerial 7Bs, with the spiked isolation stands weigh 115 lbs each. But, the results can be well worth it as yesterday brought home to me.
As it turned out, simple, tiny movements of 1 inch for one speaker and 2 inches for the other, and then playing with the toe-in made a major (to me at least) difference. Playing with speaker positioning can be a pain depending on your speaker - my Aerial 7Bs, with the spiked isolation stands weigh 115 lbs each. But, the results can be well worth it as yesterday brought home to me.
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