Hints and Tips

Hints and Tips for Better Sound

Using 2 Speakers for Music

Positioning and proximity to the wall or corners behind your speakers is important. There is no right or wrong way but only what sounds best to you.

Experiment with moving the speakers closer to the wall or corners until the amount of bass you are hearing is right for you.

Closer to the wall or corners equals more bass, further away equals less bass. Balance the amount of bass with the amount of midrange and treble to suit you.

Depending on the layout and furniture in your room, try to place the speakers as far apart as you are away from them.

Experiment with angling each speaker in towards you. Angling will be required if you hear distinct sounds from the right and left speaker, with little appearing to come from the centre. The angling will be correct when you hear a recorded voice exactly between the speakers. This is best done with a recording that features a main vocal in it.

If you are using bookshelf speaker it is important to place them on stands or on a shelf so that their centres are about the same height as your ears when you are seated. This is easily done as your eyes are in line with your ears, so setting it up visually will work fine.

Note: We all want to enjoy the best sound we can, so don’t be afraid to use the tone controls on your amplifier. Only purists think this is unnecessary but they are a great fine tuning tool.

Using 5 Speakers for Home Theatre

The first rule is to look for the best positions in your room so that all five speakers, (not including the subwoofer), are equal distances from your couch or as close to this as you can get.

Get the front speakers placed correctly first by looking at the rules above for two speakers. Note that with the addition of a dedicated centre speaker, angling of front speakers may not be necessary or convenient.  The accuracy of your centre sound will improve if you have your front speakers angled to add to the clarity.

The centre speaker should be set up to fire directly to the listening position. That might mean that if it has to be placed low, because of your entertainment cabinet configuration, you should prop it up so that it fires up to your ears. This can be done with extra stick on feet at the front of the speaker.

Now look at the rear speakers. Note here that although the levels you set becomes personal, the rear speakers are there for effects. Your attention should not be drawn away from the front of the room.

Today it is accepted that the rear speakers should be angled in to the listening position if possible.

Experiment with the “delay” controls on your amplifier. The more delay you put on the rear speakers, the further away they will “appear” to be. This is an effective way of creating the illusion that your room is bigger than it actually is. Like a real theatre.

Getting the Best of of your Subwoofer

The output from your amplifier to the sub will typically be marked LFE. This means “low frequency effects”. This means that the sub should not overwhelm the sound in the room. It reproduces all the low stuff as effects in the soundtrack.

Set up correctly, you should not be able to tell where the sub bass is coming from.

Some larger subwoofers are large and powerful enough to generate lots of vibrations without getting into difficulty. So the larger subwoofers will not need as much help from room positioning as smaller ones will.

Step 1

Find the position in your room where the sub fits into your decor and where it sounds loudest when set to match the level of the front speakers.

Step 2

Now set the 0 degrees/180 degrees switch to where the sub is loudest. Typically if the sub is at the front of the room near your cabinet or your front speakers, 0 degrees will work best. If it is positioned further back, the 180 degree position might work best.

Step 3

Set the crossover frequency so that sound from the sub does not seem to mix over the top of the sound from the front speakers.

Step 4

Now adjust the sub level so that you the bass from the sub sounds like it might be coming from the front speaker

Now you should have one sound from the front of the room and you are not sure where it might be coming from.

Helping out smaller Subwoofers

If you have a small subwoofer and you are worried about it struggling a little or even running out of puff, you can use your room to help out.

If the subwoofer should be placed right into the corner of the room or if this is not possible, place it against the wall as close to the corner as possible. This way you will be firing bass from the subwoofer into the corner or against the wall. The bass will build up in the corner and be reinforced enough to add more bass than you may have had before this positioning exercise was complete.

The increase in bass that you will hear, is in the region of 30%, give or take.

With your smaller subwoofer you can always cheat a bit by increasing the crossover control from say 80Hz up to 100Hz or even 120Hz. If the sub is operating over a wider range you can create the effect of listening to stronger bass.

A general comment about Subwoofer Performance

If you want to maximise the strength of the lowest notes being delivered by your subwoofer, trying to position yourself further away will maximise the lowest notes.

Using Ceiling or In-wall Speakers

Apart from the obvious use ceiling speakers have for getting your sound to other parts of the house, they can be effective in delivering an out of the way, 5.1 theatre system.

By this we mean that although the speakers are mounted in the ceiling, they can be positioned and set up in such a way that you have no sensation that what you are hearing is coming from above.

You have five speakers or seven if your amplifier is a 7.1 unit, all mounted in the ceiling with a subwoofer discreetly out of the way somewhere in the room.

No wires, no boxes no dusting, more space on the floor. We would encourage customers who want an out of the way system to try this.

It costs a less than boxed speakers and if done correctly, can be just as effective.

Six key points setting up ceiling speakers for home theatre.

The main advantages of ceiling speakers.

1. Flush fitting and completely out of the way.
2. Speaker frames and grilles paintable to match colour scheme.
3. No speaker wires to get in your way.
4. No boxes to vacuum or dust around.
5. Maximises floor and living space.
6. A less expensive option.

Contrary to what you might expect, if the speakers are positioned and set up correctly, there is no sensation that much of the sound is coming to you from the ceiling. It will appear to be coming at you from around you horizontally.

Point One: You will notice that our CM series ceiling speakers have pivoting tweeters. This angling can be used to successfully reflect the treble off the front wall for best effect.

Point Two: The correct placement of the three ceiling speakers across the front, that is the Left, Centre and Right, should be about 300mm-400mm away from the wall. This distance will look very close. But to successfully reflect the treble off the wall to arrive at your listening position, this is the way it should be. Your normal listening position will be about 3meters from the TV wall.

Point Three: The pivoting tweeters should be set to their maximum angle and the speakers should be rotated in position, so that the tweeters fire directly at the wall. That is way from you.

Point Four: The rear pair of speakers should be set up the same way but of course their tweeters should be fired off the rear wall, if a wall is behind your listening position. If the rear wall is far away from your listening position the rear ceiling speakers should be positioned approximately two meters behind you and the pivoting tweeters should be fired down towards the listening position.

Point Five: If you are setting up a 7 channel system, the side speakers, (speakers 6 and 7), should be set up to the sides of your listening position and ideally the same distance away from you as the rear speakers are.  The positioning directly to your left and right is most commonly recommended.

However, Subwoofer World has a personal preference for the side speakers to be positioned slightly forward say half to three quarters of a meter. This we fell eliminates the confusion between side and rear speakers sometimes heard on movie soundtracks.

Point Six: First set the speaker levels using your receiver’s automated setting system, it will attempt to set all levels equally. This is close but do not be afraid to trim the levels to what you prefer, once the automated system is done.

Helpful Tip:It is certainly helpful to bring the centre speaker level up just above the front Left and Right front speakers. The centre speaker is the most important speaker in your system. It needs to “clearly project voices” from everything else in the movie soundtrack.

Try to have about 30% of the total sound level coming from the rear and/or side speakers when compared to the L and R front speakers.

Add your subwoofer and you are ready to go.

It might be helpful for you to read the Subwoofer section found elsewhere in our Hints and Tips section.

Call 1300 556 585, if you have any questions

The In Wall option 

These speakers are mounted flush in your walls and can be painted to match your decor for ultimate stealth installation.

A combination of “in wall” speakers for the front three and “ceiling” speakers at the rear can be used if no walls exist behind you for in wall installation.

Think about these architectural speaker types for the hideaway solution.

Weather proof outdoor speakers

Subwooferworld has these speakers in black or white paintable finish. All construction parts are made from non corrosive materials, right down to the brackets and screws.

Our range of outdoor speakers from Earthquake Sound in the US are designed to provide the best possible performance for a price which is affordable. There are more expensive outdoor speakers available but they offer very little more for the money. Even our outdoor speakers are covered by a five year warranty.

Matching rated amplifier power to speaker ratings??

We receive a lot of inquiries from customers which tell us that somewhere, somehow it is important to match these ratings. In most cases it is not necessary and it most likely will have you shopping for an amplifier which is bigger and more expensive than is necessary.

Let us explain the ratings in easy to understand terms.

The power rating of a speaker is the maximum amount of power it will safely handle. NOT what is required to properly run it.

Rule one with speaker ratings says that large speakers almost always need less power for good effect than do small ones. The Efficiency or sensitivity of the speaker will dictate how much power you need.

Big speakers = smaller power. Little speakers = bigger power, to play at the same level.

So you save money when you buy any Cerwin Vega speaker because they have lots of built in efficiency.

Cerwin Vega’s largest speaker requires less power than Cerwin Vega’s smallest speaker.

It is a retailer’s myth and lack of understanding that spells this out differently than we have.  Often the correct answer can seem to be the opposite to what might seem logical.