Placement 7
Bass Response
Your bass response should neither be one note nor too
heavy. It should extend to even the deepest organ pas-
sages, yet it should be tight and well defined. Kick-drums
should be tight and percussive—string bass notes should
be uniform and consistent throughout the entirety of the
run without any booming or thudding.
Tonal Balance
Voices should be natural and full, cymbals should be
detailed and articulate yet not bright and piercing, pianos
should have a nice transient characteristic and deep tonal
registers as well. If you cannot attain these virtues, read
the section on Room Acoustics (pages 8–9). This will give
you clues on how to get closer to those ideal virtues.
Final Placement
After obtaining good wall treatments and the proper
angle, begin to experiment with the distance from the wall
behind the speakers. Move your speaker slightly forward
into the room. What happened to the bass response?
What happened to the imaging? If the imaging is more
open and spacious and the bass response is tightened,
that is a superior position. Move the speakers back six
inches from the initial setup position and again listen to
the imaging and bass response. There will be a position
where you will have pinpoint imaging and good bass
response. That position is the point of the optimal place-
ment from the front wall.
Now experiment with placing the speakers farther apart.
As the speakers are positioned farther apart, listen again,
not so much for bass response but for stage width and
good pinpoint focusing.
Your ideal listening position and speaker position
will be determined by:
•Tightness and extension of bass response
•Width of the stage
•Pinpoint focusing of imaging
Once you have determined the best of all three of these
considerations, you will have your best speaker location.
The Extra “Tweak”
A major cable company developed the following procedure
for speaker placement. As a final test of exact placement, use
these measurements for your speakers placement, and see
what can happen to the ultimate enhancement of your system’s
performance. These two basic formulas will determine opti-
mum placement of your speakers to minimize standing waves.
1 Distance from the front wall (the wall in front of the lis-
tening position) to the center of the ATF transducer. To
determine distance from the front wall, measure the height
of your ceiling (inches) and multiply the figure by 0.618
(i.e., ceiling height in inches x 0.618 = the distance
from the front wall to the center of the ATF transducer).
2 Distance from the side-walls to the center of the ATF
transducer. To determine distance from the side walls,
measure the width of your room (inches) and divide by
18. Next, multiply the quotient by 5 (i.e., room width in
inches/18 x 5 = the distance from the side-walls to the
center of the ATF transducer).
Enjoy Yourself
The Montage is a very refined speaker and benefits from
care in setup. With these tips in mind you will find, over
your months of listening, that small changes can result in
measurable differences. As you live with your speakers, do
not be afraid to experiment with their positioning until you
find the optimal relationship between your room and
speaker system that gives to you the best results. Your
efforts will be rewarded.
You are now armed with the fundamental knowledge of
room acoustics and the specific fundamentals of the
Montage loudspeaker. Happy listening!
