Does having anything in between the speakers affect anything?

[tboooe]

I was just curious if anyone has found that having (or not having) any kind of furniture between the speakers makes any difference? Currently, I have my audio rack placed between the speakers. The front plane of the speaker is about 6 inches forward from the the front of the rack. Does having anything in between the speakers affect the sound?

I ask because I had a very strange thing happen this weekend. I have been struggling with speaker (804S) setup for a while now. I could not get the central image to stay centered. It would wander all over the place and most of the time it exhibited a left bias. In other words, the central image would be somewhere left of center most of the time. I have tried all sorts of speaker placement with no luck. I removed any furniture directly to the sides and front of the speakers with no luck. I finally thought that maybe there was something wrong with the hearing. I had blown out my ear drum playing high school football so I thought this was the cause of the problem. I was resigned to the fact that I would have to use the balance control on my preamp in order to get the music to be more centered. However, this explanation never seemed right to me because in my bedroom setup (601s3), i did not have this problem. In my bedroom, there is nothing in between the speakers.

On a whim, I decided the move the audio rack because it was not quite centered in relation to the speakers.. It was slightly off center, about 1.5" to the left of center. Yes, I am that anal! After I moved it, everything changed. The music is now consistently centered.

Can anyone explain this? I seriously doubt that moving my audio rack .75" to the right made this difference. Also, should the speakers be further out in front of the audio rack?

[Kevin P]

Yes, having an object that reflects sound in between the speakers can affect imaging. This is a common occurence for those who have home theaters with a RPTV in between the speakers. Moving the speakers out in front of the object helps. An alternative is to add some sort of acoustic treatments to the rack/RPTV.

[Karma]

HI tboooe,
Generally, the experts say that you should not have large pieces between the speakers. I'm not so sure that a dogmatic rule against this is correct. Let me tell you a story.

When I was setting up my present main listening room, I had my big ol' 45 inch RPTV along the side wall to avoid putting it between my electrostatic speakers. Stats have reputation of being very sensitive to things between them. I was trying to be a good scout.

Of course, this set up disallowed using my TV and stereo together which is really a drag for movies. One day I decided to try putting the BIG TV square between the stats. You know what happened right? My carefully set up stats got a big boost in imaging and especially soundstaging. The stage became much deeper and more stable. Pretty interesting. The TV stayed there. Of course, stats are very strange. They are not known as bi-polar for nothing. We know that.

L to R balance is different than imaging. I agree that the soundfield should be as symetrical as possible. Anal is good. We wouldn't be here if we were not. The fact that your balance was wandering is odd but maybe explicable. One thing one must watch out for is mid range balance verses treble balance, High frequencies are much more directional and balance can be affected by much smaller physical room and furnature features. Consequently, the balance can wander depending on the treble contribution from the recording. This can give the impression that the entire image is wandering when, in fact, it is only the high frequencies. This may be what was happening with your system. In that case one must rearrange things in a very systematic (anal) way to determine the cause. This includes wall treatments which can cause imbalance. It can be difficult but anal folks just love these challanges. 8)

I guess I think there are no hard and fast rules for every situation. Experiment and see. That's the only rule that seems to make sense.

Sparky