Toeing out speakers?

Hi Popeye.

It could be that you have hit a sweet spot between direct sound from the speakers and first side wall reflection. This will often produce the outcome you are describing. I have been tweaking my speaker set up lately after a house move to the end of my tether and made some intesting finds. Weird hobby this as I found myself standing in the corners of the room to the point of my dear wife asking ; ‘ What’s going on for you Darling’? ( she is a counsellor) ???? . Ultimately there are guidelines but no set rules, as we are all little individual listeners. Always lovely to find the sweet spot in your room. ATB Peter

I’m a no toe-in man myself but I’ve never tried toeing out! As above I suspect it’s a function of your room acoustics etc 

Does this mean they are facing more or less straight out ? Or out out like snake eyes ?

If the tweeters are firing some distance out away from each ear, I would imagine a loss of detail focus. Might be great for some types of music but not for others.

Some speakers - notably Canadian ones like to fire straight with no toe in.  The crossover tuned so with less frequency dip between the bass/mid driver to treble when placed as such.

Sounds like some acoustic panels might turn out cheaper than your next box upgrade.  I have 5 GIK panels and I have more bass (less cancellation) and better stound stage.

Of course if you don't have a dedicated liustening room there might need to be some negociation.

Toe out is not that unusual. 

In fact it also has a lot to do with the amp as much as the speakers and room. Quite often toe in is more needed with lesser amps. Amps with more current generally need the speakers to be toed less regardles of volume to hold a solid soundstage. 

CD3/92/90 driving Mission 752 toed out ever so slightly was a cracking good system in the 90s. If the customer wanted to save money, I stuck in Arcam Alpha 5 amp and toed in the speakers.

Something I see a lot of on the system pics threads are speakers I'm familiar with, driven by Naim amps with no toe in despite the manufacturer's recommendation of fairly aggressive toe in.

Surely toeing out moves you "off axis" and you hear more reflected sound than sound from the speaker.  I'm not sure how the better amp improves the "off axis" response.

We are talking a few degrees, not like your looking cross eyed. 

Guinnless posted:

Surely toeing out moves you "off axis" and you hear more reflected sound than sound from the speaker.  I'm not sure how the better amp improves the "off axis" response.

Not with my specific speakers it doesn’t, that is one of Totems key features how wide the dispersion is compared with other manufacturers. 

Have a look at Totem if you are interested. 

As Popye says, when we talk about toe out we mean millimetres offset. Head on they generally just look straight.

Popeye posted:

Guinnless posted:

Surely toeing out moves you "off axis" and you hear more reflected sound than sound from the speaker.  I'm not sure how the better amp improves the "off axis" response.

Not with my specific speakers it doesn’t, that is one of Totems key features how wide the dispersion is compared with other manufacturers. 

Have a look at Totem if you are interested. 

From Totem's website.

Toe-in: Due to the fact that all Totem speakers have great off-axis dispersion, toe-in is generally not needed. Imaging will therefore be more stable from any point in the room. If the speakers are placed very far apart (over 7 feet) then a slight toe-in may be experimented with. However if room geometry does not permit a straight-ahead aspect they will also perform very well with a slight toe-in.

A dealer I know advocates no toe-in and he also moves the speakers quite far apart - like further then you normally would have them, maybe 12ft or more, he then recommends you sit quite close in an almost near-field position, It all seems quite counter intuitive but in fairness when he demoed it to me it sounded pretty darn good, wouldent work in my room setup unfortunately.

Im sure it largely depends on the dispersion pattern of the tweeters.  Millimeters of difference without regard to specific speakers and specific distances from them seems impossible to generalize about; there are far more differences from speaker to speaker than one can generalize from a blanket "should I aim my speakers this way" it seems to me.

But there are tons of generalizations out there (I've been reading about speaker positioning lately as I audition new speakers in my home).

Magico specifically advised me, "the toe-in angle of the tweeters toward the listener should pass over the shoulders of the listener to a 12”-14” distance behind the listeners head. More toe-out will increase the sweet spot area."  So (a) they provide specific advice for THEIR tweeter and (b) they don't regard it as a "rule" and already suggest that more toe-out provides different (not poorer) results. 

I bought the S-400s, placed them so that there was reasonable reciprocal distance and a reasonable distance from rear and side walls (for aesthetic reasons too, mine is a home not a store so no speakers in the middle of a living room) which btw respected the manual recommendations, toed them in a little for mere beauty (I love to see, from the couch, the twin thin lines of wood at the two sides of the black front panel), didn't bother to experiment further and left them as they were since then.