Setup a speaker “grid” for placement

Stereophony depends on precise time arrival from each channel to a centrally located listening position. So, as you move your speakers around in the room, you’ll need a temporary floor grid to keep from arriving at erroneous conclusions. Here’s an accurate technique from Jim Smith:

Find the position (from side to side) where you’ll be sitting (we’ll discover the front-to-back position in Part 4). If your room is symmetrical, and you plan to sit in the middle, measure how wide the room is; divide that measurement by two, and that’ll be your centerline.

I recommend you use tape that can be lifted easily from carpet or flooring. Lay down your tape on a line between the general speaker placement area to the general listening area. You’ll have to move the seating furniture out of the way while you’re installing your grid.

 If your room isn’t symmetrical, decide on how far you think you’ll want to sit from the nearest sidewall. Mark it on the floor (assuming your seating has already been removed). Measure the distance.
Now, at the speaker end of the room, mark the floor at the same distance from the sidewall. This is your centerline, from the listening area to the speaker area.

At the speaker end of the room, mark the floor every six inches or so away from the centerline, beginning in the area where you generally suspect the speakers may be placed.

Now, swing your tape measure or laser measurement device from the general listening position on the centerline so that it crosses the speaker spacing marks you’ve just laid down.  Place some marks on the floor that represent about six inch intervals - varying distances from the proposed sitting area.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t end up sitting there; we only need an equal path length from the centerline to aid us in moving the speakers repeatedly and equally.

At the end of the next part, you’ll be making some fine adjustments in speaker position, with considerably less than six-inch increments. At this final point, you’ll need to recheck your measurements from your centerline for final positioning.

But for now, we want to establish a starting reference to build our foundation.

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