01

The room plays along — whether you like it or not.

Every room absorbs and reflects frequencies differently, and differently in every spot. There are places in your room where bass nearly disappears, places where it booms, and places where it's just right — and that applies to both where the speakers stand and where you sit.

Try this: play “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk and slowly walk around the room. The dramatic differences you hear in the bass will tell you where your ideal listening position is.
02

Placement: start with the 1/5 rule.

If your furniture allows it, this is the reference setup:

  1. Speaker baffles 1/5 of the room's length from the back wall, 1/5 of the width from the side walls — same distance from each side.
  2. Your ears 1/5 of the room's length from the rear wall, centred on the room's width.
  3. Ear height between the midrange driver and the tweeter — choose stands accordingly.
  4. Toe the speakers in slightly toward you; experiment with the angle.
  5. Sit at the top of an equilateral triangle with the speakers, or slightly closer.
  6. Soft pads (rubber, felt) under the speakers; nothing between you and them.

Can't follow the rule? Start 20 cm from the wall, 2–3 m apart. Play a song you know well, pull the speakers 5 cm further from the wall, listen again — repeat until you stop hearing improvement, then step back to the last best position and set the toe-in.

03

Furniture is free acoustic treatment.

Bookcases (with books), carpets, curtains and upholstered furniture absorb and disperse sound — a furnished room plays dramatically better than a bare one with hard surfaces. Watch the first reflections especially: floor and side walls, where a carpet or a bookcase does the most good.

Don't over-dampen — music needs some liveliness. Combine absorption with dispersion. For the committed: professional room measurement, DIY acoustic panels, or a DSP room-correction amplifier (NAD, Lyngdorf).

04

Bass: the right amount, in the right place.

Never place speakers in room corners — you'll get more bass, but far less accurate. We tune our speakers for placement away from the wall. Too much bass in your room? In this order:

  1. Turn the bass down on your amplifier — simplest, usually works.
  2. Partially plug the bass-reflex port with acoustic foam and experiment.
  3. Room treatment — absorbing materials, or measured bass traps in corners.

Too little bass? Move the speakers closer to the wall — low frequencies radiate in all directions and reflect back toward you — at a small cost to soundstage. Or nudge the amplifier's bass control up.

05

Treble: detail without harshness.

Tweeters are directional — the higher the frequency, the narrower the beam. That's your main tuning tool: toe the speakers in more toward you for more treble energy, less (even parallel to each other) for a gentler top end.

Feeling the balance is off? Check the bass first — too much of it masks treble, too little exaggerates it. Adjust treble on the amplifier with care: it also pushes voices back.

06

Soundstage: when the speakers disappear.

Well-designed and well-placed speakers vanish from the room — close your eyes and you can't point at them. Instruments come from distinct, focused places on a stage in front of you. It's the parameter nobody talks about that transforms listening the most, and it's why we obsess over phase alignment.

Recordings to test with — voices and instruments should be precisely placed:

  • Norah Jones — Little Roomvoice dead-centre, focused
  • Jennifer Warnes — Bird on a Wireinstruments located on stage
  • Eric Clapton — MTV Unpluggedwhole album
  • Madonna — Voguebeginning of the song beyond speakers left and right
  • Brent Lewis — Mumbo Jumbohuge soundstage with precisely located sounds
07

The checklist.

  • Equal distance from the side walls; 2–3 m apart (or more, while the soundstage holds together).
  • Baffles at least 0.5 m from the front wall — experiment from there.
  • Listening position at least 1 m from the back wall, at the triangle's top.
  • Toe-in so the speaker axes cross just behind your head.
  • Furnish the room; avoid large bare hard surfaces; mix absorption with dispersion.
  • Nothing between you and the speakers.
  • With asymmetric models, tweeters on the inside — then experiment.

Interactive · how sound fills a room

The room plays along.

Top-down view of a listening room. Bass radiates in all directions, treble only in a narrow cone in front of the speaker — that is why toe-in matters. Drag the speakers and the listener and watch what actually reaches the ears.

Band
Placement
Reflections
At the listener
—

The ring around the listener shows the level at their spot. Try: Bass + listener in a corner → the ring fills up and turns red. Then Treble + listener off to the side → out of the cone.

A stylised diagram: real directivity changes smoothly with frequency and reflections are endless. The principle holds — and it is why our listening guide tunes treble with toe-in and bass with distance from the walls.