The Importance of Speaker Placement for Optimal Sound Quality

Speaker placement is more important than many realize. You can’t just drop speakers on a table or shove them against a wall; you have to find the right spot in the room and the right position in the area where you plan to leave them.

Acoustics Are Weird

When you place speakers, remember that sound bounces off hard surfaces and tends to be absorbed by softer surfaces. That’s why the new apartment you moved into sounded so echoey before you moved your furniture and clothing into the space, and then everything sounded normal afterward. So keep that in mind when you place speakers. Some redecorating may help if there are few soft furnishings in the room, such as adding curtains and a rug.

Don’t Block the Sound

Sometimes, the room you want the speakers in isn’t very open. You may have half walls, bookcases sticking out, large armchairs placed in between the speaker location and where you’re sitting, and so on. Do what you can to place the speakers so that the sound is blocked by as few obstacles as possible. Everything in front of the speakers can prevent more sound from traveling farther in the room. And while it might not seem like much sound has been blocked, it can be enough to make the quality of the sound seem less like what you wanted to hear. Try moving furniture, too, if you just can’t find a spot where audio from the speakers will have a clear path into the rest of the room.

Angle In

Speakers should be angled in toward the listening area. If you’ve got someone sitting in a chair with the speakers in front and slightly off to the person’s sides, those speakers shouldn’t be placed with their faces perpendicular to the wall; they should be angled in so that the sound is directed toward where the listener is sitting. If you’ve got speakers in a ring around a room, those in the corners need to be placed diagonally so that their sound is directed toward the center of the room. If the speakers are going to be up high, angle them downward as well.

There Will Always Be Something

Speaker placement is rarely going to be perfect. It may be perfect in spots, but there will likely be areas where it isn’t the best. You do what you can to reduce the number of those spots, but don’t worry if the placement isn’t exactly perfect for every spot in the room.

Be Nice to the Neighbors

One placement mistake that people often make is attaching or positioning the speakers right against an interior wall. If you live in a townhome, condo, apartment, or other attached housing, or even if you’re thinking of placing the speakers on a wall that separates one room from another in your own place, be aware that the sound can travel through the wall much more easily when the speaker is touching it.

Sound travels in waves, mainly through air but also through wall and furniture material. Those walls and pieces of furniture can break up or reduce some sound waves, which is why sound on the other side of a wall is often muffled. But if you place the speaker that’s emitting the sound right up against the wall, then the sound waves coming out of the speaker are much stronger at the point when they meet the wall. It’s easier for those waves to make it through the wall and be audible on the other side.

So when arranging your speakers, don’t shove them right up against the wall. Leave some space so that the waves coming out of the speaker don’t hit the wall right away. That will hopefully prevent any sound form getting through and reduce what your neighbors might hear. Also, don’t place the speakers right near an open window. That sounds obvious, but some people forget how loud the speakers may sound outside.

If you need a speaker repair kit, a recone kit, or just want to find out more about speaker placement, contact The Speaker Exchange. Your speakers are a critical part of your audio system, and if you don’t place them appropriately and don’t care for them, they could soon make your music and other audio sound less than optimal. Keep your speakers in good shape so that what you want to hear, is what you hear.