How far do you angle your speakers?

[fr.jazbec]

How far do you angle your speakers?
I angle just a little bit, so that the crossing of the axes would be ca. 2m in my back. Pointing the axes directly to the ear looses a little bit of wide and it seems to me if the sound goes pushy.
What are you’re experience?

[Mariner]

My experiences are nearly the same as yours.
If you angle to much the "soundstage " gets to small, if there is no angle you might lost the center .
This is a thing, next to how much distance to the walls, which takes a lot of time to be truly satisfied,
Even the taste in this changed from time to time.
But with a lot patience it's a cheap way to improve the sound, maybe more effective than changing cables etc.
By the way...I often saw pictures on websites with Hi End Systems the might cost several 10k $ with giant speakers that are pressed in corners.
From my point of view very strange, because from my experiences that won't work instead you have a perfect room correction system.
And even if it will work, it's far away from a perfect system.

[Bulldog]

Same here. My tweeters are on the inside and I angle my speakers so the tweeter fires just on the outside of each ear.

[SolarMusic]

my tweeter is in the middle, but i do it like bulldog and let it fire on the outside of my ears.
So i have circa the 30 degrees recommended by ATC.
Sound is not too wide and not too small for my taste in this position. Voices are stable in the middle.
hope this makes sense... ;-)

[AlastairH]

How far do you angle your speakers?
I angle just a little bit, so that the crossing of the axes would be ca. 2m in my back. Pointing the axes directly to the ear looses a little bit of wide and it seems to me if the sound goes pushy.
What are you’re experience?

I have a similar set up. I did experiment quite a bit to get there. To help I used a disc made by the company ISoTek, their 'Ultimate System Set Up Disc'.

This has several spoken tracks along with the use of castanets that move from channel to channel, that help you identify sound as it is panned around. Its very clever and useful, especially when trying to identify sound that sits between the middle of the soundstage and a speaker. There are also some music 'demo' tracks and test tones but I did not use those.

[Tobes]

My experiences are nearly the same as yours.
If you angle to much the "soundstage " gets to small, if there is no angle you might lost the center .
This is a thing, next to how much distance to the walls, which takes a lot of time to be truly satisfied,
Even the taste in this changed from time to time.
But with a lot patience it's a cheap way to improve the sound, maybe more effective than changing cables etc.
By the way...I often saw pictures on websites with Hi End Systems the might cost several 10k $ with giant speakers that are pressed in corners.
From my point of view very strange, because from my experiences that won't work instead you have a perfect room correction system.
And even if it will work, it's far away from a perfect system.

Yes, I have my speakers setup exactly this way - angled just slightly past my ears, so the tweeters intersect just behind my listening position.

Spacing to the sidewalls depends to some extent on what wall treatment (if any) is used and the toe in angle above. This is critical to achieve the best balance and low colouration.
As this requires much experimentation, I put felt slides under my speakers so I could easily adjust their position in small increments.

As my room and treatment is symmetrical I measure and match the sidewall, front wall and toe in distances for both speakers.

[SailorZH]

Toeing in the speakers so that they point straight to my listening position considerably narrows the stereo image, at least with my SCM19s. As all others in this thread, I toe them in just slightly and this produces a wonderfully floating sound.

I certainly agree with everyone that it takes quite some patience to find the optimal position/angle of the speakers. In my case, I have no room treatment except keeping my speakers well away from the corners. The distance from the wall is not so problematic as the 19s are closed speakers.

But I rely on s bit of room EQing with REW.

[Nopiano]

Toe-in, as it’s usually called, is at least partly dependent on the room, and partly on the design of the actual speaker. Some speakers, like popular PMCs, are quite hot on axis (rising treble) so are best heard well off axis with the speakers firing straight ahead. My old Sonus faber worked best sharply toed-in to cross in front, and gave a defined and focussed image yet with plenty of ambience. My SCM40s seem to work best beamed at me, roughly in a triangle as recommended by ATC.
If sidewalls are reflective, then sound ‘scatter‘ may make it preferred to toe-in more. If too bright on axis, toed out or in more will gently soften the sound. Ideally, a friend/partner willing to tweak the speakers while you listen is the answer!!

[AlastairH]

Toe-in, as it’s usually called, is at least partly dependent on the room, and partly on the design of the actual speaker. Some speakers, like popular PMCs, are quite hot on axis (rising treble) so are best heard well off axis with the speakers firing straight ahead. My old Sonus faber worked best sharply toed-in to cross in front, and gave a defined and focussed image yet with plenty of ambience. My SCM40s seem to work best beamed at me, roughly in a triangle as recommended by ATC.
If sidewalls are reflective, then sound ‘scatter‘ may make it preferred to toe-in more. If too bright on axis, toed out or in more will gently soften the sound. Ideally, a friend/partner willing to tweak the speakers while you listen is the answer!!

I might have this totally wrong but I seem to recall an old hi fi show demo were the speakers were toed out, in one room. Pretty positive this was a PMC speaker and I seem to recall Naim amps and source. I don’t remember how it sounded. Regardless I think it’s a good idea to be brave (!) and experiment, for all the reasons to do with the realities of how a pair of speakers, your main listening seat and the room all interact.

For quite some time I’d made some (wrong) assumptions that quite an aggressive toe in was needed in my room due to the very compromised overall speaker and close to corner boundary side wall positioning. So I think it really does pay to experiment, rather than go on what someone else says - plus it’s free!

[SailorZH]

I might have this totally wrong but I seem to recall an old hi fi show demo were the speakers were toed out, in one room. Pretty positive this was a PMC speaker and I seem to recall Naim amps and source. I don’t remember how it sounded. Regardless I think it’s a good idea to be brave (!) and experiment, for all the reasons to do with the realities of how a pair of speakers, your main listening seat and the room all interact.

For quite some time I’d made some (wrong) assumptions that quite an aggressive toe in was needed in my room due to the very compromised overall speaker and close to corner boundary side wall positioning. So I think it really does pay to experiment, rather than go on what someone else says - plus it’s free!

Experimenting is always good! As a former scientist, we used to say ,If you don‘t know what to do anymore with your results, do an experiment‘

It‘s true, it took me a long time to find the proper speaker placement, optimal toe-in, and particularly reasonable room EQing. Now things are fine, but it takes patience to get there. And you won’t get there without experimenting.

[Bulldog]

I might have this totally wrong but I seem to recall an old hi fi show demo were the speakers were toed out, in one room. Pretty positive this was a PMC speaker and I seem to recall Naim amps and source. I don’t remember how it sounded. Regardless I think it’s a good idea to be brave (!) and experiment, for all the reasons to do with the realities of how a pair of speakers, your main listening seat and the room all interact.

For quite some time I’d made some (wrong) assumptions that quite an aggressive toe in was needed in my room due to the very compromised overall speaker and close to corner boundary side wall positioning. So I think it really does pay to experiment, rather than go on what someone else says - plus it’s free!

I remember something about that too. I reckon it would work if the tweeters off axis response is more linear that was than listening on axis. Plus, Amar Bose made a lot of $$$ out of pointing his speakers at walls instead of the listeners.

There's an old joke about Amar Bose meeting Wilbur Klipsch in the street;

Walking down the street, Paul sees Amar, he turns and faces a wall and yells "Hey Amar, how's business?". Amar cups his hands around his mouth and yells "Hey Paul, I can't understand a thing you said". Paul turns towards Amar, cups his hands around his mouth, and yells "Have a nice day!".

[SKY1950]

I used to have my SCM 40 passive speakers about 5 MT wide pointing straight out, then I had a move round to form a triangle of about 3 MT with a slight tow in, to my ears this setup sounds much better and focused, I agree with others here too much tow in can sound slightly harsh !

[Bulldog]

I recently bought a pair of ATC SCM19a speakers for an upstairs lounge room. The room is about 4 metres by 5.5 metres. Because of the configuration of the room I had to place these speakers on the short wall either side of an 85 inch television. They're about 3 metres apart, 1 metre out from the back wall, and equidistant from from the listening position. The tweeters are firing just past my ears. I found that with these speakers in this particular room, when the listening position is moved further back, the wrap around effect when listening to high quality stereo decreases. My SCM150s are not as particular as the 19as are.