Setting up your sound system properly in your listening room can very often yield amazing improvements in sound quality.  The acoustics of listening rooms is quite a complex subject and there are many factors to consider.  However a great deal can be achieved by following some basic guidelines.  This is the first in a series of posts that seek to offer some guidance in setting up your listening room.

The idea of stereo sound is to create a 3-dimensional sound image, which is how we experience sound in our daily lives and when we hear live music.  This 3-dimensional image is due to differences in the sound received by each of our ears.  In stereo a different sound signal is sent to each of two speakers, carefully positioned, to provide a slightly different sounds to each ear.  The placement of the speakers relative to one another, the listener and the room is key to determining how convincing and satisfying the sound image produced can be.

The first important concept is symmetry.  The ideal situation is a symmetrical one in which the left side of the room is the mirror image of the right.

In this setup the room is rectangular and the corresponding distances to the listening room walls for the two speakers are the same.  The listener is positioned on the centre line of the room, the same distance from both speakers.  Ideally the listener and the two speakers would be equal distances from each other, forming an equilateral triangle.  This ideal arrangement is rarely possible in the real rooms in which we listen to music.  However, the closer you can approach this ideal, the better are your chances for getting the best out of your sound system.

Every object in a room affects the sound to some extent.  The impact depends on such factors as the size, shape, material and location of the object.  Therefore you should seek to make the left and right sides of your listening room as similar as possible.

Through symmetry we seek to make the effect that the room and the objects in it have on the sound as similar as possible for the two ears.  When you achieve this, differences in the sound received by the two ears will be almost entirely those in the separate channels of the recording, and only minimally due to differences caused by the room.  Then you would be well on the way to hearing the music as the artists, producers and engineers intended.

© Wayne Butcher