quad speaker set up / mixing plane

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elguapo511

Senior Member
Joined
Sep 18, 2010
Messages
210
I have heard of two different quad speakers set ups for a box room.
(set up 1) front right and rear right facing each other, and front left and rear left facing each other.
(set up 2) front right and front left facing south, and rear right and rear left facing each other.

??
If recordings are mixed on 4 corner plane, wouldn't you have to have the front and rear facing each (set up 1) other in order to notice panning effects?
if the rear speakers are facing each other wont it distort the audio plane that the engineers set up?

ANOTHER QUESTION.

If I play the FM radio with the cd-4 function on, would I need to swap the rear speakers to make the audio plane work correctly. Cuz if I dont wont the front speakers simply be facing an inverse pair of speakers, thus having the stereo effect eliminating any panning?
 
ANOTHER QUESTION.

If I play the FM radio with the cd-4 function on, would I need to swap the rear speakers to make the audio plane work correctly. Cuz if I dont wont the front speakers simply be facing an inverse pair of speakers, thus having the stereo effect eliminating any panning?

If you want to listen to stereo material, but have it coming out of both front and rear speakers, I don't think you have to swap the rear speakers. The effect that you'll get is sound coming from the sides, rather than the front. Left to right panning should remain intact.

J. D.
 
I have heard of two different quad speakers set ups for a box room.
(set up 1) front right and rear right facing each other, and front left and rear left facing each other.
(set up 2) front right and front left facing south, and rear right and rear left facing each other.

??
If recordings are mixed on 4 corner plane, wouldn't you have to have the front and rear facing each (set up 1) other in order to notice panning effects?
if the rear speakers are facing each other wont it distort the audio plane that the engineers set up?

ANOTHER QUESTION.

If I play the FM radio with the cd-4 function on, would I need to swap the rear speakers to make the audio plane work correctly. Cuz if I dont wont the front speakers simply be facing an inverse pair of speakers, thus having the stereo effect eliminating any panning?

You can't play FM radio with the CD-4 function on. CD-4 is for LP's only.
And you never want speakers facing each other - you want them toed-in so they face your listening position, which should make a 'triangle' - they shouldn't be space any wider than 30 degrees apart in front of you (which make you the long point of the triangle). The rear speakers should not be more than a foot or so behind you and should be spaced a bit wider than the fronts - the square "quad" array with you in the exact middle is wrong, wrong, wrong - we don't hear that way - nor can we.

I'll show you "roughly" how it should look / and \ being the speakers and & being you. Hopefully, my formatting will be preserved.
-----------FRONT
--------/----------\


-------------&
-----\---------------/
 
Disclord, you are right on the money! I do recall seeing suggestions for Quad speaker placement that had the second configuration that el guapo described for a small room: fronts facing forward but not angled, and the rears facing each other. The configuration for a larger room would have been 4 speakers at the corners, fronts facing rears. Personally, I think that speakers facing each other and/or speakers firing straight forward, parallel to the wall are poor setups. Disclord's drawing is the configuration that makes sense. The triangle he described will create the best image for each stereo pair. An "X" configuration works well for Quad and surround.

I recommend playing 2ch stereo and listening to each pair seperately during set up. The angles of the left and right speakers should be a mirror image of each other. The angles should be treated like a pair of binoculars. There is an optimum angle for the best stereo image in your normal listening position. Set up properly, the seat(s) should now be your sweet spot. Depending on the available space and furniture, some installations place the rears in a less than optimum position. If your rears are closer to your seating that the fronts, you will need to reduce volume levels to those speakers.

Linda
 
Disclord, you are right on the money! I do recall seeing suggestions for Quad speaker placement that had the second configuration that el guapo described for a small room: fronts facing forward but not angled, and the rears facing each other. The configuration for a larger room would have been 4 speakers at the corners, fronts facing rears. Personally, I think that speakers facing each other and/or speakers firing straight forward, parallel to the wall are poor setups. Disclord's drawing is the configuration that makes sense. The triangle he described will create the best image for each stereo pair. An "X" configuration works well for Quad and surround.

I recommend playing 2ch stereo and listening to each pair seperately during set up. The angles of the left and right speakers should be a mirror image of each other. The angles should be treated like a pair of binoculars. There is an optimum angle for the best stereo image in your normal listening position. Set up properly, the seat(s) should now be your sweet spot. Depending on the available space and furniture, some installations place the rears in a less than optimum position. If your rears are closer to your seating that the fronts, you will need to reduce volume levels to those speakers.

Linda

Linda, I'm sure you remember that the instruction manuals for some quad gear shows weirdo setup's like that with speakers facing each other - and then there is the (totally wrong) 90-degree quad layout that destroys all phantom imaging - i.e. no center front or phantom images of any kind, only sound squirting from four corner speakers. But at the time those kinds of instructions were given, the psychoacoustic tests hadn't really been done that indicated how we hear to the sides and behind us. That's why, in any quad/surround setup, (except for a surround ex type) the L/R surround speakers should never be more than a foot behind the listener and angled slightly forward - this enhances the phantom side imaging between Lf/Lb and Rf/Rb, which human hearing can't really localize all that well unless there's an actual speaker source there. And if the rear speakers are too far behind you (like the square quad of speakers with the listener in the exact middle), we tend to hear them with only about 1/3 their total width and with big "holes" of no sound to either side. So speaker placement farther apart than the front speakers and to the sides, just slightly back from the listening position is the best. It also enhances reverberation in quad recordings because we are most sensitive to reverb when it comes from the sides. And if the entire room the quad system is setup in is slightly reverberant, then a so-called "ambience labeling" occurs which allows us to localize instruments in front of and behind each other and hear 'into' the mix much better than if the room was totally 'dead' sounding or highly reverberant. So for quad or 5.1/6.1/7.1 channel, a "basic" trapezoid speaker layout is optimum for the main 4 speakers - at least if stereo imaging and best surround/quad effects are your goal.
 
Thanks, Disclord. Intelligent and informative, as usual. The one thing I failed to mention is the concept of "toeing in" your speakers. This means to slightly angle the speakers in toward the center, as your earlier diagram indicates. From there, one should adjust the speakers so that the image of the stereo pair comes "into focus." In other words, where the image of the stereo pair is it's most cohesive at your sweet spot.

Linda
 
Thanks, Disclord. Intelligent and informative, as usual. The one thing I failed to mention is the concept of "toeing in" your speakers. This means to slightly angle the speakers in toward the center, as your earlier diagram indicates. From there, one should adjust the speakers so that the image of the stereo pair comes "into focus." In other words, where the image of the stereo pair is it's most cohesive at your sweet spot.

Linda

Exactly! A mono signal or center front vocalist in stereo or quad should sound sharp and clearly imaged exactly between the two speakers. Of course, there are some speakers (Bose direct/reflecting or bi-polar speakers) that sadly can't really do that. And some people can't hear the effect, almost like color-blindness.

I sure hope our advice is helping El Guapo with his/her quad setup.
 
"... they shouldn't be space any wider than 30 degrees apart in front of you (which make you the long point of the triangle)."



Regarding the 30°, is that to say that each front speaker should be no more than 15° from the center channel position(present or not), thus less than 30° total? Or is 30° or less from the center channel position(less than 60° total)?

Thanks
 
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