“Tell me about spikes versus feet.
What should I use in what situation?”
We have basically two different options
in all of our speakers.
All of the speakers come with rubber
pads underneath the feet.
So if you have a hardwood floor,
or some other type of hard floor,
just basically put them down
on the rubber feet
and that will kind of isolate it
from the floor.
Now, if you have a carpet,
that doesn’t really work very well;
the speaker might be wobbling about.
So insert the spikes so that the spikes
can penetrate the carpet
and go into whatever floor is beneath that
– hopefully concrete or something similar –
and adjust it
so that it’s perfectly level.
And then the speaker
is solidly grounded on the floor,
and you should get
the best performance for that.
OK. Next question.
“I've read about something called toe-in.
What does this mean exactly?”
If you imagine setting up
the speaker in front of you...
If you point the
speakers directly forward,
that will basically be called ‘no toe-in.’
And if you then imagine angling
the speakers
towards you to fire more directly in
that’s what we call ‘toeing-in’
the speakers.
So the reason to do this
is that the tweeters are more directional
than the woofers.
So you want the amount of tweeter level
compared to midrange and
bass levels will vary depending
on which angle you put the speakers in.
So when you have more toe-in,
you might have more tweeter level,
but it really also depends on the room
and how the reflections work in your room.
So what you should do is basically
test out different angles
to figure out what actually sounds
best in the listening position.
I have one tip on how to do this,
which is to start out by actually
placing them wrong. So toe them outwards,
which is definitely going to be wrong.
And then start
listening to a track that you know well,
and then gradually angle them inwards.
Take note of does the sound improve?
– which it will do in the beginning.
And at some point you have gone too far
and you can hear loud sounds
actually worse and you will go back again.
That’s a simple way of figuring out
what is the optimal toe–in for that specific
listening position.
So what you should be listening for
is that, for instance,
the voice of a singer should be
clearly positioned in the middle.
So you should have a believable
presentation
of the voice in the middle of a room.
But you want to have a
wide soundstage where things are split out
properly from each other,
without having a hole in the middle.
You want that centre imaging
to be perfect.
So that balance of those two
needs to be right.
But once you actually do it
– and you do this gradually –
it very quickly
actually becomes very easy to hear.
It’s a lot easier to hear
than it is to explain.
So just try it and you’ll get the answer.