The Sweet Spot – Nearfield Monitor Placement

March 20th, 2010 7 Comments

The Sweet Spot – Nearfield Monitor Placement

by Simon Duggal

When monitoring music in your studio what you hear is a combination of direct sound from the speakers and reflected sound  from the  rooms surfaces – walls, ceiling, floor and furniture. The balance between the direct and reflected sound depends on the size and shape of your room, materials in the room such as carpets, curtains and windows etc, and the positioning of your speakers in relation to the boundaries of the room.

Fotolia 5403089 XS The Sweet Spot Nearfield Monitor Placement

Getting this balance right is crucial to getting a good recording or mix. It doesn’t matter how much gear you have, how expensive your studio speakers are or how many channels your mixing desk has. If this balance is wrong your end result will sound poor and amateurish.

There are two things you can do to address this balance:

1. Make sure your room is properly acoustically treated.

2. Make sure your speakers are positioned correctly.

In this article we’ll be looking at how to set up your speakers properly.

Speaker Positioning

Correct speaker positioning is a very important factor in creating an accurate listening position.  This will be the position where you sit whilst monitoring the recording of instruments or voices, and mixing. This position is often referred to as the Sweet Spot.

There are two main things to consider when setting up your speakers:

First, position your speakers so that the distance from the sweet spot to the centre of the woofer on Speaker ‘A’ is equal to the distance from the centre of the woofer on Speaker ‘A’ to the centre of the woofer on Speaker ‘B’ thereby forming an equilateral triangle.

Sweet Spot1 1024x1024 The Sweet Spot Nearfield Monitor Placement

Next,  place your speakers at the correct distance from the left and right walls and the speaker wall, the wall behind the speakers. Position each speaker so that its distance from its nearest wall is equal to the width of your room multiplied by 0.276 then position each speaker so that its distance from the speaker wall is equal to the width of your room multiplied by 0.447. Adjust the height of the speakers so that the tweeter in each is at ear level when sitting. Your speakers are now set up correctly.

speaker positioning1 1024x1024 The Sweet Spot Nearfield Monitor Placement

If you have any questions or comments about this article please feel free to post them below.

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  • Jim

    Where did you come up with this formula

    • http://www.simonduggal.com Simon Duggal

      Hi Jim, this is an industry standard formula that is widely used for positioning speakers. I’m no scientist so I don’t know how the formula was derived. I have used this formula to set up my speakers in various studios and can tell you that this approach ensures that your speakers avoid room modes… (points in the room where the direct sound from the speakers and the reflected sound from the surface meet). There’s an interesting article on the subject here too: Setting Up Speakers In A Rectangular Room. Thanks for your question. Simon

  • http://twitter.com/DJCHRISTOS @DJCHRISTOS

    Hi Simon, my room is 4.09m x 2.85m. My listening position should be @ 1.63m (40% of room length).
    Using the above formula the monitors go @ 1.27m from the speaker wall, meaning my ears should be roughly around 0.36m from the monitors??? Am I calculating something wrong here?

  • http://www.recordmixandmaster.com Record, Mix & Master

    Hi DJCHRISTOS,Assuming 2.85m is the width of your room, according to this calculation your speakers should be placed at 78.6cm from the left and right side walls and 127cm from the speaker wall.The distance from speaker A to speaker B should be equal to the distance from where you sit to each speaker. Please bear in mind that this is a guide and additional adjustments may be necessary. It is quite common for speakers to be placed at around 38% from the speaker wall so 40% is not unusual.Also, make sure that the centre of the woofer on each speaker is not positioned halfway between the ceiling and the floor as strong modes exist there. Again, 38% up from the floor is a good starting point.CheersSimonRecord, Mix and MasterFree Pro-Audio Tutorials <a href="http://www.recordmixandmaster.comwww.recordmixandmaster.com<br /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/recmixmaswww.twitter.com/recmixmas<br /> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/recmixmaswww.facebook.com/recmixmas<br /> http://www.youtube.com/recmixmas

  • Raudio

    Hi Simon..From my experience,i have never heard or seen this formula before.Listening positions are 40% of the room length and this is generally accepted.Your formula has eaten up nearly half of the width of the room.Therefore that formula cannot be applied.

    • http://www.recordmixandmaster.com Record, Mix & Master

      Hi Raudio, this works out at precisely 38% of the room length which is widely acknowledged and accepted to be the best position to sit whilst listening. Positioning your chair at this point with your ears at the same height as the tweeter gives the most direct sound from the speakers whilst avoiding room modes, points in the room where reflections of the sound waves off the rooms surfaces, meet with the direct sound from the speakers thereby causing given frequencies to be either cancelled out or boosted depending on frequency and time. My sweet spot is calculated by the formula above and the result is an incredibly accurate listening position!

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