Vandersteen Audio SEVEN Operation Manual - page 8
S
PEAKER
P
LACEMENT
When you place a given loudspeaker, either front ra-
diating or dipole, into a typical domestic environment,
the room effects the performance of the speaker. Some of
these effects are due to the speaker’s relationship to the
physical dimensions of the room and can be significantly
effected by placement. Every distance from the source of
sound (drivers) to a boundary (wall) has an effect. Odd
dimensions placement assures that no two boundary ef-
fects build on each other.
O
DD
D
IMENSIONS
P
LACEMENT
A method that helps find possible placements in many
rooms is positioning the loudspeakers on the odd dimen-
sional intersections of the room. The odd dimensional
intersections are where lines representing the length and
width of your room divided by odd numbers would
cross.
With their extensive subwoofer controls and room compensation adjustments,
the Model Seven’s low frequency response can be optimized for any placement. The
speakers’ positioning will effect the midbass, midrange, and treble performance
with some positions offering better imaging and superior frequency balance and de-
tail. With the tremendous variables in room construction and layout, there are no
magical formulas for determining the best speaker placement in every room. We
recommend that you try the speakers in every domestically acceptable location to
find their best midbass to treble performance in your particular listening environ-
ment. The odd dimensions placement method covered in the following sections is a
tool that can help you find an acceptable placement, but to find the optimum place-
ment, you will need to invest the time and effort to try all the possible placements in
the room.
Before you begin your positioning experiments, verify that the speakers are con-
nected to the amplifier in proper polarity and that the M5-HP crossover is in place
and properly set for the input impedance of the amplifier. The cones should not be
installed. Set the speakers on flat cookie sheets so that they will easily slide on the
carpet from position to position. To insure that the bass performance of different
placements does not bias your judgment of the midbass, midrange, and treble, all
placement experiments should be performed with the subwoofer amplifier un-
plugged.
Carefully listen to the imaging and midbass to treble performance of each possi-
ble placement with your reference quality music recordings. Without the subwoofer
sections, the speakers will have the frequency balance of high-quality mini-monitors
and should be evaluated as such. Listen for detail, clarity, naturalness, and the over-
all presentation of the music. Keep notes on the different placements to help track
where the speakers sound the best, once found use tape and mark rear cone loca-
tion.
As an example, we will use a rectangular room meas-
uring 14 feet wide by 18 feet long. We’ll assume that you
want to set the speakers on one of the short walls, al-
though this method works equally well for long wall
placement.
The first step is to take the length of the room, (18 feet
in our example) convert it from feet to inches, (18 X 12 =
216) and divide the result by odd numbers.
216 divided by 3 is 72 (all to the nearest inch)
216 divided by 5 is 43
216 divided by 7 is 31
216 divided by 9 is 24
216 divided by 11 is 20
(and so on; eventually the lines pile on top of each
other or the speaker gets too close to the wall to
access the rear connections and controls.)
The results are the distances in inches that the top front
V
ANDERSTEEN
A
UDIO
8