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Does the placement of your components effect the sound quality

J

jamiecantar

Well-Known Member
I was wondering if anyone knows if the placement of your components effects the sound quality.

For example, placing your amplifier on the floor vs a stand or placing them on a wooden stand vs a steel stand and etc.


thoughts?
 
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Good one Tom! AFAIK, a wooden stand won't sound different than a steel one or one with glass shelves. However, a good stand should be heavy and sturdy, regardless of materials used. And if you have a turntable, it should be free from vibrations, or at least relatively so.
 
Captain obvious here.

Speaker placement matters. component placement needs to be considered for proper ventilation/heat dissipation. Turntables need to be isolated from vibration.
 
I've done that

Tom Brennan said:
Indeed, I know of many that sound best placed face down.
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Well not down, but facing the other way. I was tired of telling the guitar player to control his stage volume, so I sneaked up behind him and turned his rig around mid-song so it wasn't facing forward. He wanted to kill me at first, then realized that he could have it even louder for himself without ruining the FOH mix.

Yeah, most guitar players would have probably just killed me. Worked wonders though. That was a long time ago, and I've since found other ways to cope. :)
 
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Vibration ringing through gear at the right tuning frequency can cause unwanted distortion. Or jitter in CD players. Thats the very reason people seek ways to isolate components, not all are immune to this. I have a 1 inch thick piece of slate that weights upwards of 100 lbs. It makes one hell of a sturdy amp platform :yes:
 
I think it's moderately important to not stack separate components directly on each other.. Have a few inches of breathing room between. Speaker placement is critical though.
 
afewbricks said:
Vibration ringing through gear at the right tuning frequency can cause unwanted distortion. Or jitter in CD players. Thats the very reason people seek ways to isolate components, not all are immune to this. I have a 1 inch thick piece of slate that weights upwards of 100 lbs. It makes one hell of a sturdy amp platform :yes:
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Only a record player would be affected by this. Maybe a tube amp? (tube microphonics?)

Nothing that is solid state will be affected and a CD player won't care until it skips from the bass.

:music:
 
There are a number of us here who would answer a definite yes to your very good question. Sorry none have chimed in here. I just popped over to another AK forum called The Cutting Edge in order to link you to a couple of long and experience-rich threads, but it appears all but the most recent 10 threads on that forum have vanished. Maybe that's just a temporary glitch. Hope so.

At any rate, a similar question posed over there will likely yield a lot more thinking and insight that might prove helpful. I'd go into greater depth but I'm doing this from my phone. I will say it's a complex and nuanced and sometimes counterintuitive issue, and that up to this point IMO you haven't received any useful answers.

One quick point: no glass shelves.

Cheers
 
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While I don't think it's a huge effect, I do think that isolating digital gear from vibration is helpful.
 
Placement of the cabinet/rack which holds your system can definitely play a role in sound staging and imaging. I'll confess to having a rack located front and centre between the speakers (as I love the look) but providing the speaker with ample breathing room (and avoiding gear, cabinets and racks between the speakers) yields a tangible improvement in sound stage depth in my experience. This is not always practical though.

RichPA said:
While I don't think it's a huge effect, I do think that isolating digital gear from vibration is helpful.
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I agree. Keeping vibration away from crystal oscillators which play an essential role in digital audio can only be a good thing. I use sorbothane feet on my DAC and reclocker for that exact reason.
 
After pushing my speakers through my listening room, I noticed a significant improvement. Stereo balance, locating of instruments...it sounds better.

Well, I knew before this physical activity that the placement of my speakers was very, very inappropriate.

Second I noticed that the TTs sound better, with the speakers farther away.
 
I noticed a sizable improvement by moving my source rack from between my speakers (Magnapan MGIIIa's) and just leaving the power amps and crossovers low and to the rear of the speakers. Imaging improved and sound stage expanded. Whether it was from the lack of rear wave breakup, or rear wave induced vibration into the source components or both I'm not sure, but it yielded a definite improvement.

Regards,
Jim
 
ehoove said:
I noticed a sizable improvement by moving my source rack from between my speakers (Magnapan MGIIIa's) and just leaving the power amps and crossovers low and to the rear of the speakers. Imaging improved and sound stage expanded. Whether it was from the lack of rear wave breakup, or rear wave induced vibration into the source components or both I'm not sure, but it yielded a definite improvement.

Regards,
Jim
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How long are your interconnects from sources to your amps?
 
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