3
Instruction Manual
Speaker Placement
Important Considerations Before
Installation
Recommended Wire Sizes
The longer the wire run, the heavier the wire should be. Use the following
recommendations as a guide for your installation. And if you’re in doubt,
remember that it never hurts to get the next heavier grade of wire. Also note
that lower gauge numbers equal heavier wire sizes.
Wire Run Wire Gauge:
<15 ft. 16 ga.
15 to 30 ft. 14 ga.
>30 to 50 ft. 12 ga.
Location Considerations
A major determinant of any speaker’s sound quality is its location in the
room. With in-wall speakers there are fewer placement options than with
free-standing speakers, so giving some thought to location can really pay
off. Our In-Wall Theater Systems have been designed to minimize the det-
rimental effects wall mounting can have on sound, so they sound better
than conventional in-wall speakers.
Room Acoustics
Hard surfaces create lots of sound reflections in the room while soft surfaces
tend to absorb sound. Note the speakers’ location in terms of proximity to
glass and other highly sound reflective or absorptive surfaces. A simple set
of curtains or an area rug can make a major difference in sound quality and
intelligibility by reducing excessive reflections.
Speaker Placement
For all the following situations, it’s recommended that you first place small
box speakers in the proposed locations, just to get a good idea of how
that location will sound. In-wall speakers are tough to move once they’re
installed!
For all the following placement instructions, it’s important to bear in mind
that for aesthetic considerations, many people prefer to mount their in-wall
speakers well above seated ear level, as doing so minimizes the speakers’
visual intrusion on the room.
Low Resonance Tweeter
Here’s the problem: The woofer in conventional in-wall speakers handles too
much of the midrange and woofers send out the midrange like a flashlight
beam—pretty much only straight ahead, with very little sound side-to-
side or up-and-down. So even if these speakers have a so-called “pivoting
tweeter,” that doesn’t really help, since it’s the woofer, not the tweeter, that
handles the directionally-critical midrange frequencies.
What’s needed is a speaker where the tweeter, not the woofer, handles more
of the midrange, because unlike woofers, tweeters spread their sound out
over a very wide area.
Because of this, Atlantic has engineered an extremely sophisticated, high-
performance tweeter (the Low Resonance Tweeter, or LRT™) for the
IWTS-4, and it can play most of the middle tones as well, thereby relieving
the woofer of having to do what woofers can’t do. Our LRT tweeter spreads
out the midrange sound (“disperses” the sound) over a much wider angle
than the woofer, so the IWTS-4 covers the entire listening area beautifully
in both the midrange and treble, even when it’s mounted high up on the
wall.
Stereo Music Listening
For stereo music reproduction, place the speakers at approximately ear
level when seated, with both speakers on the same wall facing the prime
listening location. A separation of approximately 6 to 8 feet between the
left and right speakers is usually good. Ideally, the distance between the
two speakers will be close to the same as the distance from the speakers to
the listening position.