- On this episode of Ask the Expert, our senior manager for the Dynaudio Academy, Roland Hoffmann, drops by to talk about speaker placement. Hello and welcome to Ask the Expert. My name is Christopher, and I'm your host. Today we have Roland Hoffmann with us. Roland, do you mind telling us a little bit about what you've been up to lately? - Yeah. This is all about room acoustics, and where to put speakers. I have must been set up hundreds of systems over the years. Every room is different. You try to make it work because very often, it's on a hi-fi show, or it's a dealer show, sometimes you even meet the customers at home. Especially on hi-fi shows, you have to get the sound right. You cannot move the walls. You cannot call a room acoustic expert, and they work something out over the next weeks. You have to work with the speakers in the room, make them sound right. That's basically what everyone has at home. They want to have it not in that room, not in that room, but here. After a while, you start to figure out some things that always work and always improve the sound. Even though every room is different, there are some things that always seem to work very well - I know that when we go on a trade show, you... Almost always there to if we do a live demo, set up, make sure that everything sounds right. - Yeah. Because the best speaker in the world is worth nothing, almost nothing if you really don't have that sound experience in that room, so you have to really make it sing in that room. - With that set, I think that we should just get started, and answer some questions, right? - Okay. Roland, we have a question from Mark and Ciprian. They were wondering if there's some kind of ideal distance from the wall. Can you talk a little bit about that? - Yeah. What is important to understand is that there is never the one ideal, say, 1 meter or 40 inch in most room. It all depends on the room length and the room width Especially in the low frequencies. It's all about physics, room acoustics. It's important to understand that sound behaves like waves, like water waves. Naturally when you control the water waves, it's like on the beach, you have these waves, and they roll out to the beach. In the room, I don't have a beach, you don't have a beach, so the waves stay in the room, and they build up something called standing waves. So across all the low frequencies, you have standing waves in the room, and where these standing waves and how strong they are, that depends on the room length and width, but they are always there. - One question that I talked to... I feel that you're saying here is that these waves, they belong, so to speak, to the room and not to the speaker in the room? - That's right. Even if you upgrade the speaker, and buy a bigger speaker, a more expensive speaker, the room waves and the room knows the standing waves. They belong to the dimensions of the room and not to the speaker. So you first have to solve or find the good listening position and speaker position before you upgrade the speaker. When you then upgrade the speaker, you really get the best sound experience, but you have to solve that first. - Okay, so it's about finding out. So in this room, it's like five meters long, four meters wide. Where should I set? And how do you go about doing that? - I can show you a picture. If we look at a... This looks confusing at first, but I try to solve it. I was talking about standing waves in a room. What actually happens is if we imagine this is a room, so we have speakers here, and we have someone sitting here. What happens in the low frequencies, you have certain waves of bass, certain different frequencies. And you have some areas in the room where the bass is exaggerated, so peaks in the bass, and you also have dips of waves where the bass actually is cancelled out. - Can you point out some of the places in this picture? - Yeah. If this is the room length, it's at first very easy to see we have one big problem area where there's always a peak and always a dip, and this is the center of the room, so that would be a very bad place for sitting there or putting the speaker. No one is doing that normally, so that's fine. But we see two other problem areas here. One is right near the front wall where the speakers are, and one area, problem area is right next to the rear wall. So if you put your speakers here too close to the wall, and sit too close to the wall, you will definitely have exaggerated bass at most low frequencies. So there is not so much an ideal distance in meters or in inch, but there are these waves, so that means we can find ideal spots in a room. - Again, the reason that we can't say like, "Oh yeah, you should have them 50 centimeters "from the back wall," it's because these standing waves, as you were talking about, Roland, they belong to the room, and every room is different. - Every room is different. So every time you find an advice say, "Oh I found out 70 centimeters is always the best," no, it's only the best for the room you experienced that in. It doesn't mean anything for all the hundreds of other rooms. Still, there are some things you can do in the room. If you move to the next picture, you just zoom in to one frequency. Let's say 60 hertz or something. Now it's easier to see that if we still have a speaker somewhere to put here, the seat is somewhere here, that if you move, you sit at the wrong spot, say here, you would complain about there's no bass. There's the bass gone? It's in the frequencies. Or if you put then also the speaker in an area where it dip in the bass, then you will have literally no bass. If you put in the right positions, you will have a smoother and still deeper bass. So if we look at that, and we have the same, not only for hi-fi systems at home but also in the studio, many, many studio engineers have the same issue, where to put the speaker and where to sit. If you look at it and if you measure it, you can find areas in every room. In the next picture, we see the room more from above, so now we look down on the room. If you look at these waves, there are some areas where the waves are more even than in other areas. This is 1/5 from the room length and also 1/5 from the room width. This is one area, you could see on the next picture, where it's not a golden rule but it's a very good starting point where it usually sounds much better because behind this 1/5, most bass frequencies build up on. Same here, and also same to the side, so it's a very good starting point to have your listening seat moving 1/5 from the room length, and also these speakers 1/5 from the other wall, and then see how it sounds like. - So this is just like a really good starting point to say, "New room, new speakers. How do I figure it out?" Let's not start from complete scratch, but let's start from an educated point, a starting point, and say 1/5 from the side walls and from the rear wall, and then you're actually off to a good start through and out. - You have the good start, and then you have to use your ears to find the right spot in your room, but generally, it works very well as a starting point. - One thing I noticed in this picture that we have on the screen right now is that you're measuring from the front of the speaker. - That's right. That's one important point, and I'd like to show it with a speaker. Most people measure from the rear cabinet or from the side cabinet. Acoustically, the side of the speaker doesn't really matter, and the rear doesn't really matter. What is the acoustic center is where the drive units are. So this is the area where all the frequencies are reproduced by the woofer and tweeter. So this is the acoustic access, so you always measure from this very spot. - Okay because that stood out to me, and I'm not as educated in hi-fi as you obviously, but I would have thought that I should measure from the back of the cabinet or from the sides, right? - Many people do that. Many people try to measure from here, but imagine you have a very, very deep speaker, then you suddenly have to move it more way forward. No. Why? Because the acoustic center is always here. So then this 1/5 doesn't sound so challenging anymore because you already have the width of it all, the depth of the speaker. - Yeah. Cool. To try and sum this up just a little bit, Roland, I think that if we go back to Mark and Ciprian's original question, how far from the back wall should I place my speakers, and is there an ideal? There really isn't. You can put this golden rule. You can use that like a starting point, but from there, it's really testing it out, and figuring it out, okay, what works for me? - And the ideal area will be somewhere around here. Even if you cannot leave it there, not everyone can sit 1/5 from the rear wall, but at least you can experience it once, and then you try to make it more manageable at your home. - Cool. Thank you, Roland. Roland, our next question is from Nicolas. He was wondering with rear ported speakers like the ones that we make, is it a good idea to have either a dampened or diffused back wall? - That's a good question because of the bass reflex, but it's important to understand that the bass reflex only emits a very narrow band, low frequencies out. It's more important where the speaker is like we talked about the distance from the acoustic center to the rear wall. The bass reflex port only emits safe frequency, around 40 hertz or 50 hertz depending on the tuning of the speaker. For example, the Special 40, it's coincidentally about around 40 hertz, but all the other frequencies, that's what's happening on the front of the speaker. This is what you have to take care of. You don't need a particular damping or absorbing behind the speaker of the bass reflex point. Better try out a certain distance from the rear wall, then you don't need to really damping or absorbing the low frequency energy behind the speaker. - So it's much better to figure out, okay, so it should be X amount of centimeters from the back wall instead of testing out different fabrics and hang drapes behind it. - Yeah, and if you do some absorbing behind the speaker, that then needs to be tuned to a certain frequency, and then you have to measure it, which is the frequency that you want to absorb, so I would be very careful with buying absorbing materials, absorbers for sounds. - If you have to find out, okay, so it's this particular frequency, and you have to find the material that then dampens diffusers up a particular frequency, it sounds like a lot of work also instead of just figuring out the correct distance to the back wall. - And you might remember how we talked about the listening distance, how it changes the sound in the room. You might damp frequencies that you might think there were problems in this area, but the problems came from having the wrong spots of the speaker, or sitting at the wrong spot. So you might buy an expensive absorber or bass trap or something because you think you have a 60 hertz resonance or something, but in fact, you were sitting not at the right spot. - Yeah, you were sitting in a dip. - Yeah. And you're absorbing frequencies even though it was more about the location of the speakers and the seat. - So Nicolas shouldn't worry all that much about diffusers, dampers. - No, try... Test and try several speaker positions, and the way you sit in the room, and think about absorbers and diffusers later. - So Nicolas, you have some homework to do. Thanks, Roland. - Yeah. - Roland, I want to talk a little bit about the powerful, or not powerful bass, and it's because Eric Hammond, he wrote us that in his listening position, it doesn't seem there's any power to the low frequencies. Can you talk a little bit about what could actually be going on? - Yeah. The good news for Eric is there is bass somewhere in his room. It's just possibly again at the wrong spot. If we go back to this drawing from the first, the waves. There are areas in the room where there will be no bass, and you might think it has something to do with the speaker, or something to do with the music, but it might be just the place where you're sitting, or the place where the speakers are, or both. You could easily play, say, a 60 hertz tone or an 80 hertz tone, and walk across the room, and you will hear some areas where the bass disappears. It's just gone, but it's not gone, it's just some inch further or some inch back. The bass reappears. It's there. Since it's a closed room, Eric's room will have bass somewhere. You just have to find it. - Yeah. And it's again because of the standing waves that you were talking about earlier that you will have, in any given room, points where it just disappears because that's a dip, or other place where it's just exaggerated. - Yeah, yeah. And so, the bass will be there somewhere. - And I guess that it's a really cool tip playing a 60, 80 hertz tone because you can walk about, and figure out what's up and down. - Yeah because most music has a lot of different frequencies in the bass, and sometimes it's easier to use one single frequency, but then again, you have to think about all the other frequencies. So it's not worth of trying the 60 hertz tone, and then you find two spots. You have to find so many different frequencies. So that means in the end, it's better to use music again. - Okay. What I hear you saying is that if you go with the one tone at a time work method, you will have a work cut out for a long day because you will have to go through all of them. - Or you would have to listen to 60 hertz music from then on. (Laughing) - That really doesn't sound that appealing. We were talking earlier about rooms that are not square, and Mark, we talked about his question a little while back. He actually asked this, what should I do, where should I put my speakers if I have a completely square room, and I know we were talking previously about this, and that's actually a quite challenging room, right? - The square room is the most challenging because I said that the standing waves, they depend on the room length, and the standing wave depend on the room width. If you have the same width and length in the room, you will have double exaggerated dips and... - So the dips and highs get really, really... - Yes, they get really, really strong. It's not impossible, it's really challenging to find good spots in a square room. Still, it works, so the thing I talked about, try 1/5 from one wall and 1/5 from the other one. It's still valid. So I would still try that out in a square room. I know it's not easy because that means you have to sit quite far in the room, but it's at least worth trying it to listen what is possible in my room. - Is there anything else that you can. Any other methods that you can use to figure out where to put your speakers? - Yeah. There is. In a square room, there's one thing called the golden ratio. Again, it's not a strict rule, but it's worth trying out, and that is based on, the square has the symmetry, 100% symmetry, so it's a good idea to break up the symmetry in a way. So I have one picture, I think. - This one? - No, one more, I think. - That one? - That one. If we imagine we have a square room here, the theory we call the golden ratio is to break up symmetry best as possible. That could be worth trying. Imagine a line in both areas where the speakers are in a ratio of 8:5 from the side wall distance and the rear wall distance. It's important. This is not inch, this is not centimeter, it's a ratio. - Eight parts and then five parts. - Eight parts and five parts, and you can reverse that. It could also be five parts and eight parts. And then you just imagine these lines where the ratio always is 8:5, and you use your ears, and a good spot to listen to it, and move the speakers along these lines, or the 5:8 line. Move the speakers along the line, and try to listen. There will be some spots where the speakers sound much better simply because you broke up the symmetry in the square room. - It can work. You can get a decent sound reproduction in a square room. If we look at all rooms, I get the feeling that when it all comes down to it, there's a lot of footwork that you have to do, and there's a couple of good starting points. Like you have the... You have the 8:5 ratio here, and then you had the previous one we talked about... - 1/5. - Exactly. And they're really good starting points, but when you've done that, then the hard part comes. That's at least what I'm hearing you say because now you have to figure out, so this actually sounded pretty good, but what if I move the speaker just a little bit to one side, or a little bit back, or a little bit forward. That's where you kinda fine-tune. - Yeah, but the good thing is you fine-tune with music, so you can actually have some fun with it. - Yeah. (Laughs) - It's not that you have to buy a expensive set of microphones and analyzing tools. You can go very far with music, and listen to music again and again, and compare how things change because there is no advice out there that comes for your room because every room is different. - Just to wrap this question up, if you have a square room, try your luck with a 8:5 ratio because that could really be a good place to start. - Or the other way around. If I would place these speakers with equal distance to the rear wall and the side wall, it's probably even worse, and this is the way to go. - Okay, perfect. Roland, we have been talking about a lot of really good tips on how you can get started finding the right position. It's been quite general. I kinda want to try to apply this to a setting now, and Ciprian, he actually sent us the schematics of his room with two locations, so I want to show you in the screen behind you. So this Ciprian's room, and he's asking us, "I have two places I can sit. Which one makes the most sense for me?" - Yeah, looking at it, so he wants to either sit here in this area or here. It's a bit difficult to say from here because we are not there, and we cannot listen. I would move the system more here because there is just less walls, less boundaries. - Down here, right? - Down there because there is just more space to work with the speakers in the room, to find good spots. In the other area... - So that's this one up here. - It's not too small. It's also a 30 meter, 80, but again, you have a wall, you have this area, and I would try to start with the open space. - So if we look at the open space here, we were talking about symmetry earlier, and I can see that Ciprian's, in the schematics here at least, he's working at having this, from his listening position, the right speaker 1.2 meters from the side wall and from the back wall, and it's not in the acoustic center. Can you talk a little bit about that? - Yeah. We need symmetry about this triangle. We'll talk about that later. It's not so critical because there is no wall here, but still, having the equal distance from the rear wall and from the side wall is not ideal. I would try to break that up. You don't have to stick close to this golden ratio, but it's worth a try, but at least I wouldn't make them more equal because every time you have equal distance to a wall, to two walls, you will have some waves, some low frequencies building up, and you have some low frequencies canceling out each other. And you don't want that. You want a smooth and still deep bass, and therefore it's better to get some unequal distance here. Whether this is the shorter area, or this is the shorter area. It doesn't really matter. It depends on where do you sit. - Cool. As you said, it's obviously hard for us to say that that's just how it is because we haven't been there and listened, but you would definitely recommend Ciprian to start out working with the red zone, so to speak, right? - Especially since he has a larger speaker, he has a Dynaudio Sapphire, which is a very good speaker, and it needs some space, therefore, I would recommend the more open space for that speaker. - Perfect. We have one more, Roland, another picture, and this is from Ting, and his question is actually if he should move his speakers a little bit forward in his room. What are your thoughts on that? - On first, it looks very good because he is not too close to the rear wall. That seems like a very good distance. This Confidence he wants have enough space. When I say enough space, it's a little tricky to say because remember, I said that in the low frequencies, it all depends on the room length of the room where you put the speakers. Even from this photo where you think, "Oh that's a good distance," you don't know how deep the room is. If it's a very deep room, it might be a very good distance from the rear wall if it's a very short room, and you cannot see that. It might again the one point where too much bass and some frequencies and it canceling out bass in some other areas. So it might... At first, it looks good, but maybe he should try to measure the room length, calculate the 1/5, and see how far he is away from that rear wall. - Okay. One thing that I noticed in this picture that Ting sent us is that obviously it's not the widest room, so the speakers kinda have to be close to the side walls. There's not much you can do about that, but if you had to say something about it, or give some advice on what he could do, where would you start? - Yeah, you cannot do much about the room dimensions. Probably it helps if you tow in the speakers slightly more to have a little bit less energy to the side walls, but probably what helps more is to have some sort of absorption or diffusing at the side walls that can be. There's no space. You cannot put a bookshelf there or something but some fabric. - Heavy drapes, maybe. - Some drapes, curtains, or a wall carpet... Something... Something soft, something metal or fabric. That would help to have a better stereo matching. - Cool. I hope that you guys can use Roland's advice in these two positions. Thanks, Roland. - Yeah. - Okay, Roland. One thing I noticed that you were talking about is that you could play a one-note, 80 hertz, and just use that, and we talked about well then you had to go through every single note, and that would be a bit boring, I guess. If you should do something that's a little more interesting, and do this with music, is there anything that you can recommend for finding the right bass performance in the room? - Yeah. It usually works very well if you have a bass line playing along, so that's always repeating itself along the song. While the track is playing, you can walk around the room, and listen to it. It's not so good to play, say, a disco or electronics track where it's just one bass or a kick drum or something. - 10 hits from a beat, it's not the right music to play. - Not the right one unless that's the only music you listen to, but then you actually find a good position for the speaker and where you sit for that particular bass frequency, and that's not what you want to do. You want to find the best position where all of your music sounds good. And therefore, I would recommend to use music but certain tracks where it have this repetitive bassline. - Do you have any suggestion for us? - Yeah, I brought some CDs, so we can make some suggestions. One that always works is an old one, Lou Reed, Walk on the Wild Side, because it has this double bass playing all along the song. It's not very deep but it's strong enough so you can easily focus on it, and then again, move the speakers, and move the seat. - Cool. - Another one is a bit more, and it's from Daft Punk. It's Get Lucky. Probably you heard it too often? - I've heard it a couple of times, yeah. - But it still works if you'd only bassline this time. It works very well because it also has this bass going on and on and on. It's not a one-note bass. It plays along. It covers a lot of low frequencies, and not too many so you can easily focus on it. Same goes for an even older track that's from the '78, '79. - So before my time, yeah. - It has similar bassline playing along. That's the track as the model. That's very good. Another one for a change is by Turboweekend. - Danish Turboweekend, yeah. - They have a track called Sweet Jezebel, and that also works very well especially in the bass. You can easily focus on how the bass plays in the room. - The thing that binds all, the common denominator for these tracks is, as I said, repetition in the note, right? - Yeah, yeah. That's easy for you to follow. Still, it's not a one-note bass like a frequency of 80 hertz or 60 hertz. That doesn't really help you across all the bass notes. - And it's about moving around in the room while that track is playing and figure out - Yeah, move your seat, and move the speakers slightly. After a while, you will really know how the bass should sound like. You will hear when it's right, so to speak. - Cool. I would definitely go with the Daft Punk one, but that's just my taste. Thanks, Roland. - Welcome. - Roland, our next question comes from a bunch of people. It's from Thomas, Dragan, Erik, and I have to say your name but it brings me back to when we started Ask the Expert where I always said, "I'm sorry. I hope I'm pronouncing this correct," and that applies as well today, so it's Cariappa. It's about the stereo triangle and listening position, and what to do about that, and I was hoping that you could share some thoughts on it. - Yeah. First of all, music recorded in stereo requires the stereo triangle. Not everyone can do that at home, but ideally, you have, you sit in a stereo triangle. In a studio, you always have this perfect stereo triangle. So three equal sides, and you sit at the center, at the peak of this triangle, and you have a very near field listening distance, and have a perfect damp environment. That's one. In a home hi-fi setup, it usually works better if you have a longer triangle. Imagine you have 3 meter or 120 inch apart, the speakers apart. They sit slightly further back your listening distance to each speaker is more than these 3 meter or 120 inch, so that gives a very good sound balance, sound energy because you're not analyzing music, you are listening to music. So it's absolutely fine to let it sit a little bit further back rather than closer to the center of the triangle. - And it depends on the type of listening that you're actually doing. So if you're just listening to music... - And the perfect triangle is of no help if you sit still at the wrong point at your room, so you really have to be flexible with these. You have to have a symmetric triangle, but sitting exactly at the peak or slightly further back, I would recommend slightly further back. - Okay. Cool. But again, is there a triangle in listening position? When I have that down, when I sit in the right triangle, is there more to it than that, or is it just? - It's also about the tow-in and the side reflections. - I used to think that. I have a picture here, right? - Yeah. - Where we can see a little bit of tow-in. - We could see a little bit of tow-in. First of all, we imagine to sit here, which is a triangle or a slightly longer triangle, and then of course the question is, do I have the speakers pointing directly at me, or do I have the speakers faring parallel into the room. This picture shows a very good tow-in. It's when you sit in the center of these two speakers, at stereo triangle that you still see the inside veneer, so the inside panel of both speakers. So you can see or you can imagine this is not facing straight at you. The speakers are not facing completely away from you or the width of your shoulders, but you have a slight tow-in that you can still see the inside veneers. It's not about is it two degrees or five degrees but if you can still see some of the inside of the speaker, then you have a very good starting point. The rest depends a lot on how the room is like the side walls, do you have naked walls at the side, do you have a lot of acoustic reflection, or do you have a bookcase, or you have something at the walls to diffuse sound. So the exact tow-in really depends on the room and on the acoustics. Use your own ears. But this is a very, very good starting point, a slight tow-in. This is all about the sound energy. No speaker radiates sound like a torchlight. Every speaker radiates sound more like a funnel. It spreads. - A cone shape, yeah. - Yeah, a cone shape. Therefore, it's more about the energy across all frequencies that you have to take care of, not only pointing at you, not faring away from you, but giving the right sound balance. It often works with music where you can hear the voice, and we can hear, have a good sound stage. - You're talking about the sound stage now. I feel like with the stereo triangle, I kinda get why it has to be like that, but what happens if I'm not there? What's the benefit of sitting in the right place compared to sitting in a suboptimal one? - Yeah, good question. If it's for background music, it really doesn't matter, You can still enjoy music on a good pair of speaker even if it's in the background. If you're in the kitchen or if you have a party, it's still fine. But remember what happens in a studio. In a studio, all the engineers sit there, and they do the mix, they produce a sound image in front of you, so they really put the triangle there and the guitar there and the drum over there, so it can be a natural recording, so you have to record a tone, or it can be just in the studio, or it just happens on a synthesizer computer, but there's always something where these instruments are in front of you, and you only get close to this sound experience that the sound engineer wanted to create for you if you have a similar listening position, and that's, sorry to say, in the center of two speakers. That's why you have the same, or we experience the same what the sound engineer wanted to. - Okay. So, what would happen if I were sitting let's say a little bit to the right of the center of that triangle I would actually start to lose definition on the sound stage, so I wouldn't be able to pinpoint with accuracy where each instrument and the singing was placed? - Exactly. It will all be a little broad, and the speaker will not be in the center. It's okay because it's still. We talked about this Daft Punk. It will still be Get Lucky. It will still be that song. But there would be some details what the sound engineers created that you will miss out. It's really quite a journey to listen into a recording, and find out what the engineers and musicians were after, what they created. - I remember listening to a pair of speakers here, and it was just like, you know, you... when you have a song that you've listened to over and over again, and you then rediscover it on a pair of new speakers, better speakers, you start to see those details that you didn't notice before. And if you weren't sitting in the right place, what you're saying is that would be harder to uncover in that track, right? - Yeah, you said exactly that. You start to see these things. Even though they're not there, it's only sound, but you start to see the instruments and the sound effects right in front of you. That's a good thing or the great thing about a good stereo system, a good pair of speakers. They can give you these extra things. It's more than just the tune and the sound of the recording, it's also what was created in the studio. - Yeah. I think that's actually pretty nice, right? - Yeah. - So... Let's end it there. Thanks, Roland. - Welcome. - Roland, let's go and talk about the final user question today. It's from Peter Lufrano, and he just bought a pair of new Contour 30s. He has had a Contour 1.8 MK II, I think, in the past, and he was wondering what should he do in terms of speaker placement with the new ones compared to his old Contour 1.8. Is there any tips that you can give him. - First of all, I would always start at the same position where the old speakers were simply because you would know, or Peters knows how his room sounds like, how his speaker sounds like with that position. So I wouldn't change it at first. I would try to spend some evenings with the same speaker position. How I know the Contour 30 is I would put them slightly wider apart and angled in a little more in than with the 1.8. That advice also goes for the Contour 20, for example. So slightly wide apart. - Is that because it's bigger speakers or? - It's slightly bigger. It somehow has a lower frequency extension. The stereo machine is slightly different. It's a slightly larger speaker, also the Contour 20 compared to the 1.3, and the Contour 30 compared to the 1.8. I would try to achieve a stereo width of approximately three meters again from the acoustic center of the speaker, not the outer cabinet, not the inner cabinet. But if you cannot get to that, it really depends on the room width again. I would try with three meters apart, and then see how it sounds like. That's slightly wide apart, slightly more angled in than your old Contours. - And still spend a couple of evenings in the same position as your old speakers, right? - Yeah, yeah. To get to learn the speakers because you have to fix things, speaker position and listening position. It's still the same room, I imagine. Get to learn, get to know the speaker before you do any moving around. - Great. I hope Peter can use this. Roland, we're out of user questions. I still have one more question for you though. Earlier on, we were talking about music for figuring out the low end and where you should put your speakers, but what about for instance the high end? Is there any kind of music that you can recommend? - Yeah, there are things what to listen for. In the mid frequencies and the higher frequencies, it's all about imaging and staging. Very often, a mono recording works very well, but it's not easy to find a true mono recording. Some things that work well is again a classic at least in the audio world is Jennifer Warnes. There is a track called Bird on a Wire. This is a really good recording. You can really pinpoint the instruments in front of you. You could somewhat drew a map of where the triangle is, and where the drums are, where the bass is, and where the singing is. This is a very good recording by quality but also how you can hear into the stage, into the recording room, and where the sound engineers put all the instruments and the sound effects. This is one good advice. Another one would be Pink Panther soundtrack. There is no voice on this one. It's important not to get the original one, but this is by Christophe Beck, a French composer, for the movie soundtrack. Again, you could really hear every instrument at its exact place. If you can't, you have to change something in the setup of your speaker, or do some absorption or diffusion of the side walls to cure some reflections because on the recording, everything has its place. You should be able to hear that. It's all very intense recording. It's the last track of this. - Last track. - The last track. The originals. - And get the Christophe Beck. - The Christophe Beck. That's important. One last one. That is Norah Jones. Some of this album, a very famous one, there is one track called Little Room. It was supposed to sound like as if recorded in a little room. Almost everything on this recording is dead center. So if you listen to Little Room at home, and you don't have the centers, or you don't have the voice dead center in front of you, there's something not right in your setup because the guitar and especially her singing is just in front of you there. She sits there. - Is there any point to going from a track like the one you recommend from Pink Panther where you have like the really wide image where you can really pinpoint everything to the right and to the left, and then to quickly change to a track like the Norah Jones here where everything should be dead center? - Yeah. Maybe it's easier to start with the Norah Jones because then it's really easy to... "Okay, do I have a proper center between my two speakers?" Yes. - Oh yeah, that makes sense, yeah. - And then you can move on to more complex recordings where there's more going on in different places between your two speakers. So this is a very pure recording. It's just two instruments and her voice, so it's very easy to focus on, on that. - If I have to compare this to what we were talking about earlier with the bass, the low end, is that with the low end, we were looking for repetition in the tracks, and here, it seems like we're going for a detailed richness? - Yeah. It's more variation. Because of the low frequencies, it was all these waves in the room. Here, it's more about seeing, hearing into the recording, what happens in front of you. So it can be more complex. The better you can hear into the recording, the better because good sound engineers state they took a lot of effort in making this soundscape in front of you, and that can be enjoying music, it can be classical music images. - Cool. A final question and then I'm gonna stop. Is it better to go for the tracks that are really good for the low end first, or is it better to go for imaging first when you're setting up your speakers? - That's a good question. I would start with the low frequencies first because it's very easy to find the right spot by moving the speakers back and forth. I would start with that. Also because if you don't get the bass right, the bass will overpower everything that happens in the mid and higher frequencies, so you have a very muddy, powerful bass, and it's very difficult for you to hear into the recording. When you clear out the bass, when the bass is deep but still smooth, it's easier for you to listen to, or listen into the recording. I would do this way around. I would listen. I would take care of the low frequencies first, find two good spots in the room, actually three, one where you sit, and then take care about imaging and staging and stereo width and everything. - Great. To me, that's really helpful, so thank you. - Yeah, welcome. I hope it was helpful for everyone too. - Yeah. Roland, we're out of time. I just want to end by saying thanks for being here, and I hope you enjoyed it. - Yeah, they're good questions, and thanks for sending the rooms and the pictures. - Yeah. Don't forget to keep the questions coming. We'll see you next time.