How far do you keep your Yamaha HS5/7/8 from the front wall?

[LoveEnigma18]

I am planning to order Yamaha HS7 soon. I read in the manual that Yamaha recommends placing them at least 1.5 meters from each wall, which sounds ridiculous to me considering that size of the room itself it just about 3-4 meters for most of us. I consider it only a guideline, because it not at all practical for most home studios.

The maximum I can afford placing them away from the wall is 12-14 inches from front wall. From side walls, they will be about 1 meter, so that should be fine.

Would like to know how far have you kept yours from the front wall in particular. How does it sound in your setup and if you need to use the trim switch for achieving optimum results?

Thanks!

[lfm]

10 years ago when I made my call I looked specifically for some settings common to many that allow dropping frequency response from 150-300 Hz and down due to distance from wall.

So apart from have some switches for bass or mids and similar this kind of general adjustment to adjust to room.

I looked at Focal, Adam and Dynaudio. But ended up buying some passive speakers I use with my hifi amp instead, not generally known some local folks make them.

One interesting thing I found was that you can adjust bass response by how much you cover up ports in speaker cabinet. Most often these are for creating a resonance to increase low end response, so perfect to adjust when closer to a wall. So covering ports is one way to go if no separate setting for distance to wall - to loose some low end. You drop low end earlier if you cover ports - limit may go from 50 to 60 Hz or similar.

And look out for Yamaha specs - the HS80 series i looked at were specified frequency response -10 dB - which really is not standard. You expect specs to go to -3 dB, not more. So if comparing specs - I would take Yamaha with a grain of salt for low end. Really weird.

As I mentioned I even found that by covering ports just by half I got one bass response and covering fully another. These ports works a bit like resonance of a flute - you get a resonance frequency due to amount of free tube, kind of. Really interesting.

[LoveEnigma18]

Thanks, but I have chosen HS7 for a few reasons, the most important being they are affordable to me compared to others and they will offer me better bass than my current M-Audio BX5a, which I have been using for 10 years now. The -3 dB is around 50 Hz for HS7. I have to choose active monitors to keep things simple. Adam T7V are also good, but expensive by more than $120.

Yamaha HS Series_FR.PNG

[recursive one]

Do you know about such a thing as SBIR?

http://arqen.com/acoustics-101/speaker- ... erference/

It's one if the reasons of not placing monitors close to walls.

Also is your room treated? In my room the monitors (7 inch woofers) stand approx 70 cm from the corners, but the corners are covered by rockwool bass traps. Probably not the ideal placement either, but the monitors sound fine to me, bass-wise.

[LoveEnigma18]

Do you know about such a thing as SBIR?

http://arqen.com/acoustics-101/speaker- ... erference/

It's one if the reasons of not placing monitors close to walls.

Also is your room treated? In my room the monitors (7 inch woofers) stand approx 70 cm from the corners, but the corners are covered by rockwool bass traps. Probably not the ideal placement either, but the monitors sound fine to me, bass-wise.

Yes, I did read about it some time ago. Sorry, forgot to mention, I do have my home studio acoustically treated.

Mine would be around the same distance from the corners and I do have 8" (4" glasswool + 4" air gap) corner traps. The problem is my room is only 13 feet in length, so I cannot afford placing the monitors more than about 1 feet off of the front wall.

The problem is it is not possible to test them in stores here normally, let alone in this lockdown period. I need to order a pair from an online store. If I don't like, I have to return it for exchange/refund. A tedious process, but that's the only option.

[thecontrolcentre]

I have my Genelec 1029As on stands about 1.5 metres from the front & side walls. 1091A sub is as close to the wall as possible.

[LoveEnigma18]

I have my Genelec 1029As on stands about 1.5 metres from the front & side walls. 1091A sub is as close to the wall as possible.

Lucky you. I am sure yours is not a home studio then.

[thecontrolcentre]

I have my Genelec 1029As on stands about 1.5 metres from the front & side walls. 1091A sub is as close to the wall as possible.

Lucky you. I am sure yours is not a home studio then.

You'd be wrong. My studio is in a room in my home.

[LoveEnigma18]

I have my Genelec 1029As on stands about 1.5 metres from the front & side walls. 1091A sub is as close to the wall as possible.

Lucky you. I am sure yours is not a home studio then.

You'd be wrong. My studio is in a room in my home.

Oh, great! But how long is your room then?

[thecontrolcentre]

I have my Genelec 1029As on stands about 1.5 metres from the front & side walls. 1091A sub is as close to the wall as possible.

Lucky you. I am sure yours is not a home studio then.

You'd be wrong. My studio is in a room in my home.

Oh, great! But how long is your room then?

Its a good sized room, about 5m by 3.5m. I use it as a studio only. There are some photos in the
Studio Pics thread.

C__Data_Users_DefApps_AppData_INTERNETEXPLORER_Temp_Saved Images_tcc_studio_november_2019.jpg

[LoveEnigma18]

Very nice, thanks for sharing. Looks like a jam packed studio room.

[roman.i]

Would like to know how far have you kept yours from the front wall in particular. How does it sound in your setup and if you need to use the trim switch for achieving optimum results?

Thanks!

Nothing special in Yamahas in comparison with other similar format speakers.
The issue with close front wall are bass reflections, you get a boosted boomy low end if the wall is close. Another issue is the limited sound depth, reflections don't have space to develop the depth.
In small room best you can do is to cover that wall with 15-20 cm depth acoustic broadband panels, so basically that depth covers full range of frequencies including bass.
I have the front wall covered, including sides(early reflections), so it creates what called "dead front - live end" setup. Works for me.

[LoveEnigma18]

Would like to know how far have you kept yours from the front wall in particular. How does it sound in your setup and if you need to use the trim switch for achieving optimum results?

Thanks!

Nothing special in Yamahas in comparison with other similar format speakers.
The issue with close front wall are bass reflections, you get a boosted boomy low end if the wall is close. Another issue is the limited sound depth, reflections don't have space to develop the depth.
In small room best you can do is to cover that wall with 15-20 cm depth acoustic broadband panels, so basically that depth covers full range of frequencies including bass.
I have the front wall covered, including sides(early reflections), so it creates what called "dead front - live end" setup. Works for me.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will consider keeping them as further away as possible. I also have the corners, sides, ceiling and rear wall treated with 8" panels.

There are not too many options in the price range I am looking at, so I think I will just go ahead with Yamaha HS7 and get used to them, like we need to with any monitors. Hopefully they will deliver better bass than my M-Audio BX5a.

[JCJR]

Sometimes you get accidentally lucky and an untreated or lightly treated room sounds better than usual.

Other times one is not so lucky even with fairly heavy treatment.

That sbir thing, you are likely to get some interlocked bumps and notches in the freq response regardless of distance to front and side walls. It is just that the frequency of the bumps and dips will depend on the distance of speaker to ear versus speaker to wall to ear reflection time delay differences. It makea a comb filter just like the short delay in a flanger or chorus effect.

Just like you can tune a digital delay comb filter by adjusting the delay time, you tune the speaker room reflection comb filter when you move the speaker thereby changing the reflection delays in the room.

You can take a ruler to the distances in your room and use simple formulas to guesstimate where your humps and dips are likely to be at different ear and speaker locations but all the wall floor ceiling and studio furniture reflections make such a complex system that measurement is the proof of the pudding.

Personally i would be inclined to treat all walls with as thick possible fluffy fiberglass (ideally 300 to 600 mm thick) and I would bump the speakers real close to the wall kinda burying the speakers flush with the front surface of the fluffy fiberglass treatment. Thereby attempting to raise the sbir frequency as high possible and have enpugh absorbtion to basically kill off reflections at that high a frequency.

Fiber absorbers typically work best at higher frequencies, and as you move a speaker closer to a wall the sbir gets tuned higher, and also the highs are more directional less likely to reflect as much from front wall behind the speaker. I like a fairly dead flat room response. How do you judge the reverb in a mix in a lively room?

But every room is different and whatever configuration measures and sounds best is the one to use even if the good sounding config ypu cant figure out why it sounds best. Acoustics is complicated and not real intuitive so if something turns out to work dont worry about why too much.

[LoveEnigma18]

Thanks, good points. The room acoustics is really difficult, especially when it comes to problem solving. It becomes frustrating and you just end up saying, heck, I will just get done with it.

After enough research and reading, I have finally decided to get Yamaha HS7 in the next few months - it's monsoon now and lockdown period too, so waiting for it to end. Considering I have a decent acoustic treatment in place, hoping they will perform well.