How to Turn Your Room into a Good Acoustic Environment

Most listening rooms can be made into good environments for stereo speakers with a few simple steps.

Set up your speakers if possible with no hard or reflective objects between or directly beside or behind them. Reflected energy off such objects will cause "late arrivals", time delayed error signals which confuse imaging and make for irregular frequency response. If you must have such objects (e.g. amps or equipment racks) in close proximity to your speakers, move the speakers forward of them at least a few inches. Placing the speakers behind the plane of such obstructions will jumble the soundstage.

Better still is to install damping material such as Sonex (or convoluted mattress foam) on the walls behind and beside the speakers and at least a few feet in front of them. For an all-out approach, the speaker end of the room should be damped with 3" or thicker foam on the back and side walls plus ceiling to a depth equivalent to one third the room length. If you have open spaces behind or between the speakers (such as archways into the next room), this is excellent, since such open areas are perfectly absorptive. 

If you have vaulted ceilings you want to place the speakers on the wall where the ceiling is lowest, and rises upwards at an angle similar to a bandshell. If you have a vaulted ceiling and place the speakers on the wall where the sides of the ceiling meet at their high point, you will have echoes and confused soundstaging.

If you have a choice of setup locations, use the short wall of the room as the speaker wall and place them 12" to 16" from the back wall and 18" or more from the side walls. Toe the speakers in towards the listening position so that you are nearly on axis with the mids and tweeters when sitting centered between the speakers. The speakers should crossfire at a point one to two feet in front of your listening position.

Much depends on room dimensions; try to have the listening position at least 8' or more from the speakers. The longer the space into which the speakers radiate, the better bass response you will obtain. The closer the speakers are together, the more they should be toed in.

In almost all cases spikes or other elevating devices should not be used with your VMPS speakers. They are designed to couple directly to the floor. Tonal balance is greatly influenced by side and back wall reinforcement. If you are getting an imbalance or fuzzy sound, try moving the speakers first closer, then farther away from the back wall. Adjust level controls and bass damping as per the instructions "How to Adjust Bass Damping on Floorstanding VMPS Speakers".