Loud And Clear: How To Properly Place Your Outdoor Speakers (2024)

FAQs

Loud And Clear: How To Properly Place Your Outdoor Speakers? ›

Instead, audio experts recommend placing speakers opposite each other, angled towards the center of your chosen area. There should be 10 to 12 feet of space between each speaker with around 12 feet of distance from the speaker to the center of the areas.

If possible, give them a little protection, whether under the eaves of your house, against a wall that blocks the prevailing wind or in the somewhat protected confines of a pool cage or lanai. Generally, separate your speakers as much as possible but no more than 20 feet from one another.

The speakers should be placed at the two center points of an ellipsoid touching the walls of the room. This gets the speakers a distance from the side walls and virtually eliminates early reflections. The sound reaches your ears first, resulting in better soundstaging and tonal balance.

Just don't mount them much higher than 10 feet above the listening area. Mounting speakers under the eaves also helps hide them for a discreet look.

Ideally, your speakers should be at ear level when you're sitting in your listening position. If your speakers are too low or too high, the sound can become muddled or distorted. While it may be tempting to place your speakers in the corners of your room to save space, this can actually lead to poor sound quality.

You may have heard of the “38% rule”, whereby you set your seating position 38% of the way into a rectangular room from the wall in front of you, so as to minimise standing waves.

Rules are made to be broken and I cannot think of a better one to break than that of the Rule of Thirds. When that rule is applied to loudspeaker setup it calls for the room to be broken up into thirds: 1/3 of the room's longest dimension away from the front wall is where we place the speakers.

Apply the One-Third to One-Fifth Rule

Position the speakers so that the distance between the front wall is 1/3 to 1/5 the length of the room.

How loud do outdoor speakers need to be? ›

For 300 to 500 square feet, look for 80 to 100-watt speakers; 150 watts to 175-watt speakers will cover 600 to 800 square feet with clear, sharp music sound at soft volumes. Speakers with 250 plus power will cover over 1,000 square feet.

Not necessarily, however, if you live in an area prone to extreme weather such as sub-zero temperatures, you may want to cover the speakers with a plastic bag or bring them inside to help prevent components from absolute freezing during the long winter months.

How Many Watts Do I Need For Outdoor Speakers? As a rough guideline, experts recommend 60 watts per speaker for spaces below 300 square feet, 100 watts for 300 to 500 square feet and 100 to 175 watts for 600 to 800 square feet.

Decide roughly where you will be positioned when listening, then place your speakers so that they form an equilateral triangle with your listening position. Speaker separation. Try to get about 4 feet of separation for bookshelf speakers or 8 feet for floorstanding speakers.

Speakers are best placed when the tweeters are at ear level. Unless the speakers are large towers, they should never simply be placed on the floor. If you don't have suitable furniture at home, you should consider speaker stands such as the sonoro STAND. Please do not place anything in front of the speakers!

Both speakers should face toward the listener, with the tweeters at roughly ear level. To achieve optimal listening height, we generally suggest using speaker stands.

The height speaker channels should be placed in the upper left/right corners of the front stage. Typically, this will be 40-45 degrees off-axis and about 8 feet in height. A downward tilt of the speaker will improve mid/high frequency response and reduce ceiling bounce reflections.

Now, the reason that we usually suggest that you should keep at least a couple of feet between a wall, whether it's the back wall or the sidewall and your main speakers, is because we get something, if the speaker's too close to a wall, we get something called boundary loading.

In a 5.1 system your surround speakers are best placed to the left and right of your listening position. Space them apart the same distance as your front speakers (or a little wider), and face them toward you.