With all but the best equipped studios, positioning of monitors has to be a compromise between the theoretical optimum and a practical compromise with your environment. Do a quick search and you’ll read intructions about how you should position your monitors a third of the way across your studio space. This is great if you have a fairly small studio which is rectangular, but what if your space isn’t rectangular or is very large? And getting it inch perfect is fairly pointless if you have other problems in your environment like a very large window or an unusual ceiling.

So there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to perfect positioning. It’s just one of the other features of your studio environment that you have to work on. There are however some rules that you do need to follow.

1. Don’t position you speakers close to a solid wall. This will create distortions in the low frequencies and can cause unwanted reflections.

2. Don’t place the monitors on a hard flat surface – not your editing desk for example which will give you reflections that can be impossible to manage and put some sort of cushioning material underneath.

3. Do place them equidistant from your ears so that you and each speaker are at the points of an equilateral triangle about 3 – 5 feet away from one another.

Pro Audio Speakers - Positioning Studio Monitors

Go to proaudiospeakers.org for a detailed explanation.