Why placement matters so much
Your room is part of the sound system. Bass bounces between walls and builds up in some spots while cancelling in others, and hard surfaces near the speakers send reflections that blur the stereo picture. Cambridge Audio's acoustics team describes reflections from nearby hard, flat surfaces as a common cause of muddy sound. Good placement will not fix a difficult room, but it is free and easy to undo.
Before you start, connect everything and make sure the system works. Our guide on connecting a turntable to speakers covers the wiring side.
Build the listening triangle
The classic starting point puts the left speaker, the right speaker and your head at the corners of an equilateral triangle, all sides the same length. RealTraps' room setup guide by acoustician Ethan Winer uses the same layout and adds that the point of the triangle sits just behind your head. Cambridge Audio suggests starting slightly narrower, so you sit a little further from the speakers than they are from each other.
Pick the seat first
Decide where you will actually sit most of the time. Placement works around the listener, not the other way round.
Measure the speaker spacing
Measure tweeter to tweeter. Bookshelf speakers often suit closer spacing; floor-standers can go wider.
Match the distance to your seat
Move the seat or the speakers until each speaker is about as far from your head as the speakers are from each other, or slightly further.
Keep it symmetrical
Centre the setup between the side walls where you can, so both speakers see a similar room.
Set toe-in and tweeter height
Toe-in means angling the speakers inward toward the listener. Cambridge Audio's head of acoustics puts the usual range at about 10 to 15 degrees; more toe-in tends to bring more treble and focus. RealTraps aims the speakers at the listener's head. Try a small angle first and increase it only if the centre image feels vague.
- Tweeters should sit roughly at ear height when you are seated; both sources agree on this.
- Speakers on a low cabinet often fire at your chest. Stands or a gentle upward tilt help.
- Cambridge Audio's head of acoustics calls dedicated stands “probably the single best upgrade” for a bookshelf speaker.
- On a desk or shelf, a layer of foam under each speaker stops the surface from resonating along with it.
Give the speakers room from walls and corners
Distance from the walls controls how much bass you hear. Cambridge Audio notes that a speaker pushed into a corner tends to sound boomy, and that moving speakers closer to the wall behind them adds bass while pulling them into the room reduces it. As a first try in a rectangular room, it suggests about one fifth of the room dimension from each wall, then adjusting.
| What you hear | Try this |
|---|---|
| Boomy, heavy bass | Move speakers away from the rear wall and out of corners |
| Thin sound, little bass | Move speakers a little closer to the rear wall |
| Vague centre, singer drifts | Narrow the spacing or add a little toe-in |
| Sound collapses to the middle | Widen the spacing slightly |
Find the right seat in the room
In a rectangular room, bass has a deep dip exactly halfway between the front and back walls, so RealTraps calls the exact middle the worst place to sit. Its 38 percent rule places the listening seat about 38 percent of the room length from the front wall, or from the back wall if that suits your room better. In a 5-metre room that is about 1.9 metres from the wall behind the speakers.
Treat that number as a starting point. The same guide says 38 percent may not end up the best seat once walls, furniture and the speakers themselves are taken into account. Move the seat in small steps, around 10 to 20 cm, and listen to the same bass-heavy passage each time.
Fine-tune by ear
Use one familiar record
Pick a well-recorded track with a clear centred voice and steady bass. Use the same passage for every change.
Change one thing at a time
Move one speaker setting, listen, then decide. Changing spacing and toe-in together makes it impossible to tell what helped.
Mind the room
Bare walls and windows reflect more. Curtains, shelves of records and soft furniture soak up reflections and often help.
Mark the result
When it sounds right, mark the speaker feet with masking tape so cleaning day does not undo your work.
Plan the layout before you lift anything
Moving heavy speakers is easier with a plan. The room geometry tool in the CrateCore app takes your room's length and width and draws a to-scale starting layout: the listening spot at 38 percent of the length, the speaker positions, the distance between them and the gap to the side walls, with a note when the room is too narrow. It is a starting geometry, not an acoustic measurement, so finish by ear.
You can also save your speakers and the rest of your system in My audio setup, so the details are at hand when you change something later.