The rule of thirds

Many of my readers have asked for some setup help in these posts and what works for me is to simply throw one in here and there as the mood strikes. Perhaps one of the most fundamental setup procedures is speaker and listener placement in any given room. You have to have a starting point when you setup a system and using the rule of thirds, originated and popularized by one of the best in the industry Harry Pearson (HP a true high-end treasure), is by far the best. Our goal will be to achieve a disappearing actin your living room where you can't pinpoint the location of the left and right loudspeaker when they're playing music (unless you're like the customer I wrote about yesterday). Using the rule of thirds is simple: place your loudspeakers one third the total distance of the room from the rear wall and your listening position the same one third away from the opposite wall. For example, let's say you have a room that's 15 feet long and 12 feet wide. The loudspeakers would be placed 5 feet from the rear wall and your couch would be 5 feet out from the opposite wall. That's it. Remarkably simple and surprisingly close to what you will wind up with in the end. Now what's left if for you to make minor tweaks - how far apart are the speakers, how much toe in, etc. We'll cover more specifics in a future post.