More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for stereo?

[jbeckva]

So here's what I'm thinking. Say I wanted to put a pair at the rear of the room, right? Face that pair forward as well to the listening area. Should I wire out of phase is the first question that comes to mind - the drivers are essentially facing opposite of the fronts, right?

Second (and bigger) question... what's gained? Is it worth even trying? Hmmmm.... I am not so sure. If we all did it that way, then wouldn't there be a big "Marshall Stack" at the REAR of the "Coliseum"?? Reflected (and not direct) energy is all part of the experience, no?

I think I'll work on a few shelves instead... now THAT's a definite benefit there...

 

[stuwee]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

Speaker stacking has many fans, especially the Advent folks, it's more about reinforcement when you stack, tho I like the idea of using one pair to bounce off the walls. I tried a version of this with the JBL's and the Logans, wicked bad load on the amp and the Yamaha can handle 3 pairs down to 1ohm , I'm afraid to test that out, don't want to ruin a nice amp

I was always a fan of Phil Spector's 'Wall of Sound' production, would be to cool to have a bank of JBL's or Altec's on the back wall just to have your hair look like that condom commercial......

I haven't heard a true Quad set-up in years, most of the older nice reicevers are in need of a major very costly overhaul. I have the Quad Teac A3340 RtR just in case.....

 

[jbeckva]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

What I'm sayin is with the speakers at the rear, it's not quite "normal" .. or is it? Generally we have speakers on one side of the room only, right? So in that case, there's probably a good reason not to put 'em at the rear as well, quad setups not-withstanding. I can think of two - which is (a) you kind of get into some weird phase/frequency relationships and (b) if it was a good idea, more peeps would do it (hehe.. I dunnno.....).

Or maybe it's upsetting the natural order of things, like how you'd expect the vocals to be coming from the front, but if they're all around I can see how that would be a turnoff. That sort of thing...

 

[Elite-ist]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

Hi jbeckva,

Is your goal to add the second pair of speakers to create more room fill with an expansive sound field? With four speakers, but trying to create a better stereo sound field, by placing a pair behind your listening position, there would have to be a fader control to adjust the rear speaker outputs to where you like them best. Are all four speakers the same models? I found with a modern fader control or older quadraphonic receiver I could adjust the fader and balance to my liking. There was a method I used long ago from an article I read in an old stereo magazine (early 80's) to create ambience. I added a pair of smaller satellites to the mains, and wired in a speaker level control potentiometer. But I've forgotten how the wiring to the pot went - and it's critical it's right to create a slight echo. You adjusted the pot to expand the sound field. All I can recall it was a series/parallel connection which didn't change the overall impedance to the amplifier, and used only the pair of amplifier speaker outputs.

Nando.

 

[orange]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

My bedroom is so small it doesn't matter. My 3-way, 4-speaker Pioneer towers are strong enough that I just worry about not making myself deaf with the Infinity RS4000 based (no original speakers, Pioneer CS-06 woofers). I can turn it down and still be happy.

Since I sold the Onkyo DR-90 Saturday I await the SX-450 moving in.

In a small room...trust me it's not disconcerting at all to have the front and rear like that. It fills in a lot. Nost of the stuff I sent through the CD-4 Quad JVC was played in DISCRETE and came out nicely. I prefer the fill.

 

[speakerman1]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

I have seen it done. Just never did it. Couldn't afford another set of speakers. It sort of adds dimension to the sound. If that is what you want to call it.

Larry

 

[stuwee]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

How much room do you have in that mancave of yours? You might want to look for a Marantz 4400 for this experiment, 50 watts times 4 and an uber cool scope to mess with your mind while you listen

Like Nando said, it has a fader to get the sound just right. If you find one with the Dolby decoder on the back, score! (it's useless now but, crazy collectors pay big bucks for them )

http://www.classic-audio.com/marantz/4400.html

 

[Web Police]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

Go ahead and try it. I have done it before and I liked the sound reinforcement. Don't expect that you will be listening to concert like conditions. I used to have a quad system with four matching speakers, but I rarely if ever listened to any quad sources, just stereo played through the four speakers. The four speakers were all wired in phase with each other, however this sis something you could experiment with also.

 

[jbeckva]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

I could try it, but yeah... I didn't think about needing a fader to balance front and rear. I'd need to bring out another amp/receiver/combo/whatever and work the two volume controls individually.

Hmmm... save it for the weekend when I'm hopped up on coffee sometime... that's my vote.

 

[laatsch55]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

Gotta a Marantz 4300 that I fixed but the guy died before i got it back to him. See Larry it coulda been worse!!!! The widow told me to keep it, she couldn't walk through the house without bumping into stuff anyway. Has all the features stuwee is gushing about.

 

[Elite-ist]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

I'm considering going with a quad system, if I can figure out how to do it without the use of my Sansui QR-4500 quad receiver. I have a Pioneer QD-210 decoder and can use a Pioneer SA-9500II as a second amp for a pair of HPM-100s. My RT-1020L is capable of 4 channel playback and I have a few quad open reels to play, now.

Nando.

 

[speakerman1]

Re: More speaker placement musings... Four speakers for ster

Technics use to make a very nice processor. It was 5.1; but you could do a quad. The rears were stereo. I had one and ran Marantz monoblocs and my Hafler. Sounded pretty good.

Larry