Nearfield monitors/ Stand up or lay on their side?

[the_riff]

Been seeing different people have them sometimes standing str8 up and some that have them on their sides. What are people prefs here?

[analogcabin]

Acoustic Research AR18s....on their side. Kool.

[colinandrew12]

i know that when i bought my tannoy reveals, it very explicitly suggested that you NOT lay them on their side. of course, i ignored this....figured it was just some formality and used them like that for about a year. then, one day, i got a wild idea to stand them up and honestly, i can hear quite a difference. they sound a little more accurate and flat this way for some reason. i mean, i understand the ideas of the way the frequencies would be hitting my ears and how this would be reflected by the positionings, but i never could've thought it would make such a drastic difference.

[Spiderhead69]

Yamaha NS-10M's, on their side...

IS that Greg Norton in your Avatar?

[spectralgrey]

I guess just look at any text on the things and turn them to make the text readable. If you want to experiment with placement you can surely do so, but this way you at least know they're placed the way they're intended. NS-10s are obviously meant to be horizontal, and others are vertical. I guess ultimately, as with any audio decision, do whatever sounds best to you.

[the_riff]

Well they are Dynaudio's and the print has it sit so that they are verticle.... Hmm...

[pk]

I have my KRKV6II laying on their sides, tweeters out, sounds great to me.
I had them vertically at first, but the bridge on my workstation made the tweeters a bit too high, so the horizontal takes care of that.
No phasing, comb-filtering or stereo imaging issues to report. As mentioned above, if it sounds good and your mix translates, then H/V placement means sweet f*** all....

[superg]

i lioke to turn ;em on their sides,as this spreads the tweeters...giving me a wider listen.since we're setting these things up in an isoscoles triangle,and trying to "remove" the room,this seems to make the most sense,to me.One exception,in my humble experience,is the small genelecs peaceG

[Professor]

There shouldn't be any enormous difference in setting bookshelf speakers upright or on their side, but there are a couple of factors to keep in mind:

First is the relative distance of the drivers. When the speaker is wertical with the tweeter above (or below) the woofer, the drivers have a certain configuration of ear-to-woofer and ear-to-tweeter distance (ideally the same according to Thiel & Tannoy) that will not change if you 'toe in' the speakers so they are pointing towards your listening position. But if the speakers are on their side, you have to be more careful about toe-in because you will change the relative distances of the drivers.
(Of course, this could happen vertically if you tilt the speakers down using a wedge, Auralex MoPad, or perhaps wall mount brackets, but that is a less likely scenario than missaligning when they are sideways.)

The second consideration is the distance between the tweeters. We use high-frequency information for spacial cues, and when the speakers are upright, the tweeters will be at a particular distance, but when they are sideways, that distance will change unless you slide the speakers cloaser or further apart to compensate.


Of course, there are also other reasons why bookshelf speakers might fall on their side in a studio: If the monitor bridge is too high relative the the listener's ears, the speakers might land sideways or even upside down; If the engineer needs to see over the monitors to see a video screen or the control room; Or if the speakers would block out too much of the larger main speakers.

When I used to install home theaters, I would always try to consider where the tweeter was positioned to achieve a wider or narrower image when sideways, or to get closer to ear level when either higher or lower than the listener - especially when dealing with in-wall speakers.

-Jeremy

[Mark Alan Miller]

I have NS-10Ms that the legending make them look like they wanna be vertical. I use 'em horizontal anyway...

I imagine that with some box designs, getting the designed-in time alignment might be more difficult with a non-maufacturer-recommended placement, but in a lot of cases, if the speakers are postioned correctly it shouldn't make too much difference. Remember, that changing the position from vertical to horizontal will affect how the sounds from the drivers hit other surfaces before getting to your ears, such as reflection off of a console...

[spankenstein]

Read the manual. The monitor on the Alesis monitor ones says specifically that they shoudl be vertical or tweeters in if horizontal which is the opposite of what most people do. These are supposed to be time aligned which is why the suggest that.

If the priniting looks vertical why do you want to be sideways?

[locosoundman]

Ignore the manuals. Take a mix that has razor sharp imaging over headphones - especially something that has very clear, dead center vocals. Now get your monitors at ear height (or a little above), in the optimal stereo listnening position (equilateral triangle with speakers turned in 30 degrees). Now position them upright, close your eyes and listen. Now turn them sideways - tweeters out - and listen. Then set them upside down (tweeters on the bottom) and listen. And lastly, set them tweeters in and listen.

Listen for a razor sharp center image, and clear localisation of that and the other instruments between the speakers. Whichever postion gives you the best and most precise image, go with that. My monitors at their current height and distance happen to give me the best results upside down. Yours may yield different results.

[joel hamilton]

So funny. I had this discussion with a very trusted mastering pal the other day because we just got a big ass cinema display, so I HAD to flip the NS10's up on end, and they sound way better. Because of the meter bridge height and a bunch of other factors. My V88's are to the outside of the NS10's and that is where I really get my image correct anyway, but the NS10's actually seem to "converge" at my head better up on end. Weird. I like the difference, though I cant qualify it with actual stat's as to why.

[jca83]

i talked to russ berger (sorry for the name-dropping), one of the world's best studio designers and acousticians, and he said you should always put your speakers standing up. except for things like ns-10M when it's designed that way. the reasoning is this:

if you have your speakers on the side, they look like this:

tweeter woofer woofer tweeter

this makes your sweet spot very narrow, because all four have to fire a long distance to get to where you're sitting. so, if you move left and right of the sweet spot (to say, adjust a level on your console), you're out of the sweet spot and the high end changes.

if you put them standing up, the image stays the same (meaning your sweet spot is larger).

[nestle]

great thread-
I''ve pined over this issue for a while. On my NS10's the writing does suggest sideways, but since they are used at my home studio which has less space they are vertical and I'm OK with it.
I think the sideways thing is for those really big jet set type studio's with a wide control room, for that kind of sideways more space on top for cocaine decadence.