No Absolutes in
Speaker Placement, and Vinyl in the Year 2002
Speaker placement
It's a truism in audio that the positioning of loudspeakers
is every bit as important to the overall sound as the inherent quality of the speakers
themselves. Once a sound wave leaves a speaker, it's at the mercy of every surface in the
listening room, which can enhance or wreck the sound.
That's fine as a principle, but lots of people ask how,
given that importance, we can find out the optimum positions. Trial and error is one tool,
of course, but even if you find a setup that sounds acceptable, is it really the best for
that room and that equipment?
All that came to mind recently as I was browsing a high-end
audio site on the Internet, and I came across a piece in which the author quotes a very
detailed formula for placing a pair of stereo speakers (no multichannel nonsense for these
guys!). I won't bore you with the actual formula, which had the user dividing the
dimensions of the room by some arcane fraction and then adding some constant to figure out
where to put both speakers and listener. The author quoting this was critical because he
felt it wasn't detailed enough to cover every situation, and he offered some complicated
additions.
It was all quite amusing piffle, and obviously designed to
offer a level of certainty to those lost in a world of complicated acoustics, but in
reality, there is no such formula and there never can be.
For one thing, no two speakers radiate in exactly the same
way, so they all interact with nearby surfaces differently. There are also no two rooms
that are identical, and even if there were, the speaker designer (or formula-maker) can't
know which variety you have. And it's even very difficult to find two positions in a given
room that have exactly the same acoustic characteristics. So even if you follow a
placement formula, you're still going to have to move things around to get them sounding
right, so you might as well start out by doing it in the first place.
Fortunately, one of the liberating things about today's
surround-sound setups is that they make positioning both easier and less critical. Easier
because the satellite/subwoofer combination is far more flexible than a system where
speaker positions have to take into account both imaging and good bass performance. Once
you separate those, your placement options increase.
And things like imaging and spaciousness are no longer a
tricky matter of moving speakers only a few inches to get the right effect. The center
speaker basically handles imaging, so a singer or solo instrument remains in the right
spot no matter where you sit. And acoustic ambiance is reproduced by the surround
speakers, rather than having to be created psychoacoustically in your head.
Some care must be taken in placing all those speakers, to
be sure, but it's nothing like as difficult as it was in the old two-channel days.
Vinyl
Several months ago, a reader wrote to ask where he might
find a replacement stylus for his old turntable so his daughter could have the pleasure of
listening to his old vinyl LPs. He had been in touch with the equipment's manufacturer,
who couldn't provide the exact replacement, and I said that if the proper part couldn't be
found then he might as well trash the old cartridge and get a new one. In any event,
buying a replacement stylus -- if you can find one -- often costs as much as buying a new
cartridge.
Another reader wrote to say he had
also experienced this problem but found a dealer who could supply a replacement. In
digging a bit since then, I've learned that replacement styli are indeed available for
many popular cartridges, but you may still have trouble finding them. And if yours is a
moving-coil model, forget it -- almost none of them had replaceable styli, and instead had
to be returned to the factory for "re-tipping." Mucho dineros!
I took an afternoon recently to play shopper, to see just
how hard it would be to get an old cartridge up and playing again. It wasn't an
encouraging experience.
I started out at that repository of electronic bits and
pieces, Radio Shack. The salesman told me that they do sell replacement styli, and that
they were available for numerous cartridges, as long as I knew the model number. But his
store didn't stock them, and he didn't know of any that did. Ordering from the central
warehouse would take something like six weeks. I didn't even ask the price.
As for the option of replacing the cartridge altogether,
that would also take time, as they don't stock those either.
I then dropped into a nearby high-end audio salon and
talked to its turntable guru. I was surprised to find that they even had such a person,
but he said that it's a regular weekend feature of the store to check out and tune-up old
turntables. He said that they didn't carry replacement styli, partly because there are
thousands of different ones available, and he couldn't hope to have them all. In addition,
he said that the typical older turntable has been sitting in an attic or basement for
years, and the cartridge body itself has usually tightened up, so that even a new stylus
is likely to sound bad. He does sell new cartridges, however, and recommends that option.
Starting price, at least for the ones he sells, is about $200.
The place that seemed the best bet was a local specialty
record store, which sells lots of vinyl (mostly 45s) and caters to disc jockeys. They told
me that most audio dealers have given up on record-playing gear, except at the very high
end, and that stores like theirs are the best bet for replacements. But like all the
others, they say it's not worth the cost, and buying a new cartridge is the most
satisfactory answer.
That, or pitching your vinyl altogether.
...Ian G. Masters
ian@mastersonaudio.com
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