stubbed your toe in

[Thomas savage]

ok popcorn picking audio lunatics , what's your toe in mantra? mine is to cross in front of my face(XXX toe in for the hardcore lover) but with my right speaker a little more toed in than the left.. this seems to lock in image, its immersive and gives great HF energy but without being bright..

whats the science? (that's a appeal to the smart guys.. all one of them)
What do you do? why? and what else have you tried?

 

[Sal1950]

Approximately a equilateral triangle if possible, toe in crossing over a bit in from on my face has always imaged the best for me. That has remained true over a couple of totally different systems.
The closer the positioning (nearfield) minimizes room interaction and gives the sharpest focus within reason.
The toe-in I stated is also the designers recommended set up. (Hsu Research)

 

[Thomas savage]

thanks Sal, we toe in the same then other than my very very slight right spk extra toe in. i will get some batteries for my laser measure so i can post exact measurements for my triangle. i go off the reservation with spk separation but that's another topic i guess.

toe in just seems to get neglected and also guys seem to rely on measuring rather than listening when setting up speakers. i used to laser everything so when i looked at it it was all nice and symmetrical but that's bs imo. you need to refine by ear and it can be surprising where things end up.

any one else for toe in??

 

[Don Hills]

I've always done it, crossed just in front of my main listening position, since the 70s and 80s, when speakers were typically shorter and wider, with drivers offset laterally on the baffle (not arranged in a vertical line). Speakers tended to be optimised for on-axis frequency response, so pointing the speakers somewhere other than at one's seating position could be a crap-shoot. I found my Calibrated Acoustic String very useful.

http://www.mcsquared.com/string.htm

I wish I'd thought of it first, I'd sell it... only $1995 / meter.

 

[Sal1950]

A quick sightline so you just barely see the light break on outside surface of the enclosures gets you close.

 

[amirm]

Ming is slightly outward from facing me.

 

[Thomas savage]

Ming is slightly outward from facing me.

this was my old set up and i 'grew up' with off set tweeters 'Proac' like Don. what's happening though amir? i know about the side reflections but you must by toeing in like me swapping the reflections round so right speaker comes the long way round off the left side wall etc?

 

[Mivera]

With your speakers they might sound good with no toe in. But all depends on how close they are to the walls.

 

[amirm]

this was my old set up and i 'grew up' with off set tweeters 'Proac' like Don. what's happening though amir? i know about the side reflections but you must by toeing in like me swapping the reflections round so right speaker comes the long way round off the left side wall etc?

Let me make sure I explain properly what I have . The best sound of a speaker is its direct sound. If you put an arrow on it, it would point right at your ears. Everything else is harder to control for the speaker designer. Pointing the speakers directly out would have you listen to those off-axis sounds. For that reason, I point the speakers right at me, toed in fair amount to do that.

In my current setup, I deviated a bit from that since my listening place is a loveseat and I often have my wife and someone else sitting next to me so wanted a wider sweet spot. And I sit too close to my speakers and doing that made that effect less pronounced, i.e. gave me a larger soundstage. The amount I backed out here is small. Speakers are still toed in toward me.

 

[Thomas savage]

Let me make sure I explain properly what I have . The best sound of a speaker is its direct sound. If you put an arrow on it, it would point right at your ears. Everything else is harder to control for the speaker designer. Pointing the speakers directly out would have you listen to those off-axis sounds. For that reason, I point the speakers right at me, toed in fair amount to do that.

In my current setup, I deviated a bit from that since my listening place is a loveseat and I often have my wife and someone else sitting next to me so wanted a wider sweet spot. And I sit too close to my speakers and doing that made that effect less pronounced, i.e. gave me a larger soundstage. The amount I backed out here is small. Speakers are still toed in toward me.

ok, nice i have a love seat too... get the buggers to sit on you, problem solved. have you tried the toed in so they effectively cross in front of you? this is reputed to spread a wider listening sweet spot but i have not found this to be the case though i like it for other reasons..

did you toe in by ear or use a laser guide to target your ear( i know you have them a little un toed in that mine)

people think i am nuts for the toe in i use but this seems to be more popular these days and certainly on this forum.

i have tried all kinds of toe in, seems to be a effecting thing.. more so than it gets credit for.

 

[amirm]

Right now I have done it by ear and eyesight. Plan to use a laser but when something sounds good, I get lazy about playing with it more. And it sounds good now . I ran Dirac and it compensated for their inaccurate distance to me (about 1 foot of timing delay).

I agree that toe in makes a lot of difference and variations are infinite. I was for example mesmerized by the difference it was making in the height of the center image. It would go from being almost on the floor to ear level. I don't have easy answers for cause and effect here.

 

[Thomas savage]

Right now I have done it by ear and eyesight. Plan to use a laser but when something sounds good, I get lazy about playing with it more. And it sounds good now . I ran Dirac and it compensated for their inaccurate distance to me (about 1 foot of timing delay).

I agree that toe in makes a lot of difference and variations are infinite. I was for example mesmerized by the difference it was making in the height of the center image. It would go from being almost on the floor to ear level. I don't have easy answers for cause and effect here.

shameful, crown king nothing

if your happy dont mess with it speaker position and toe in are centimeter sensitive imo... dont even breath on them if they sing like a bird and all musicians are present and correct in the stage both in placement and intelligibility and presence\loudness.

getting the performers at the right height can be a chore for sure, its one of the black arts of speaker setup..

 

[Sal1950]

Right now I have done it by ear and eyesight. Plan to use a laser but when something sounds good, I get lazy about playing with it more. And it sounds good now .
.

il saluto, I would never have admitted that.

 

[TBone]

Stubbed my toes positioning speakers once too often ...

 

[Mivera]

Some find they get a wider sound stage with less or no toe in. But all depends on how the speaker is designed.

If you look at these speakers for example, they offset the tweeters to the wrong sides. They do this to enhance soundstage width. They recommend no toe in. I have a friend that has them. Not my cup of tea.

 

[TBone]

If you look at these speakers for example, they offset the tweeters to the wrong sides. They do this to enhance soundstage width. They recommend no toe in. I have a friend that has them. Not my cup of tea.View attachment 637

Interesting, my speakers have a similar offset, and out of curiosity, I've tried 'em both ways. Obviously the tweeter in position was as designed, and preferred.

 

[Thomas savage]

yep been there,

i still toed them in but only half way to my ear..

 

[NorthSky]

Some find they get a wider sound stage with less or no toe in. But all depends on how the speaker is designed.

If you look at these speakers for example, they offset the tweeters to the wrong sides. They do this to enhance soundstage width. They recommend no toe in. I have a friend that has them. Not my cup of tea.

View attachment 637

Tell your friend he can experiment; reverse their position, and still no toe-in.

* A wide dispersion speaker with good off-axis response is a very interesting mechanical device to experiment with...regarding toe-in.
Our room's parallel side walls are its matching partners for the kind of sound reproduction we'll be collecting @ the MLP.

If we try different toe-in say every six months and live with it for that time period, and then change it for another six months...it could become revealing the type of music and recordings that adapt better to this toe-in or that one. ...We can do that for twenty years, with always a different amount, in the same exact room, or we can switch rooms or even houses or even loudspeakers.

How much space should be around a speaker, like from it's nearest surface? Zero, because the floor is making contact with the loudspeaker's footprint, bottom plate.
Ok, about then from the front wall? ...Side walls? ...Ceiling? ...And is each speaker better @ certain amount of toe-in, or is it a personal sound preference?
Do we go with pleasant measurements and from judicious room treatments, and do we also use our ears to assess and evaluate our personal sound pleasantness?

Do we hire an expert with sophisticated acoustical tools and equalizers and trust his scientific expertise without sweating the small stuff and live happily ever after, or do we use that money to buy music recordings we love with our own sound adjustments? We'll never know for sure till we experiment with all possibilities, that we try all the loudspeakers in the market, that we test every room, tra-la-la... If we keep a realistic head on our shoulders we balance "our sound" with what we have without stressing too much.

I remembered living in different homes with different speakers and experimenting with toe-ins almost everyday. I was twenty, and younger, and older too.
Now, some folks have speakers that weight 750 pounds each. And those same folks are not twenty but sixty, seventy and over eighty. Unless they take a lot of hormones and viagra pills, most of those folks you won't see them much experimenting with toe-ins. Better to hire a construction engineer with a forklift in your room.

Alright, let's fall back to science fiction now, our true passionate audio hobby. Methinks that offset tweeters in speaker's front face are a good start to experiment with no toe-in @ all...firing straight @ the room's back wall.
And, it all depends; side walls proximity, distance between the two speakers, ...to the listener, and if it's a dedicated stereo room only or playing dual roles as a multichannel music room too...like with a pair of surround speakers and a center channel speaker. ...Say five full range exact same loudspeakers (20Hz-20kHz).
What's the toe-in of each of them five speakers now? ...The center channel is easy...straight @ the MLP, and is it the same with the main front L & R speakers plus the pair of L & R surround speakers...all firing straight @ the MLP?

Play with toe-in.

 

[Mivera]

He's tried everything possible with these speakers. Unfortunately nothing helped IMO Anyways it's not rocket science. Move them around until it sounds best for your tastes and your hearing. Because it's each individual's highly flawed hearing ability that matters in the end anyways. That's very hard to correlate with what's theoretically the best on paper. The 2 measurement mic's attached to a human head aren't near as linear as the calibrated electrical ones.

If that doesn't work, perhaps viagra may be required

 

[AJ Soundfield]

Approximately a equilateral triangle if possible, toe in crossing over a bit in from on my face has always imaged the best for me. That has remained true over a couple of totally different systems.

That's recommended for most so called CD (Constant Directivity) speakers, like horns-waveguides, etc.. The reason isn't to complex if one understands how stereo constructs are created via time/intensity. Here is a nice illustration:

Due to the L-R intensities remaining consistent due to the directivity and prop loss over distance, the image is stable over a wide listen area and does change with head movement.

cheers

AJ