Every home studio owner has at some stage struggled with getting mixes to translate to other systems. The answer is often to upgrade your studio montiors. However, almost as important as the quality of your speakers (and more important, in my opinion, than your choice of brand), is where to place them in the room.
The Genelec SpeakerAngle app helps you to map out your room, and decide on the optimum angle for a stereo or surround (up to 7.1) system. It’s the first digital tool which allows you to correctly set the toe-in angle of your speakers.
You simply set your speaker to a straight angle (0º), place your iPhone, iPad, or iPod on top of the speaker, select the Stereo or Surround option, and tell the app which speaker you’re adjusting. As you turn the speaker in (with the device on top of it), the app will tell you what the current angle is. The industry recommends a speaker angle for nearfield monitoring of 20-45º, and within this range the speaker icon in SpeakerAngle will change colour from red to green.
You can pair speakers within the app, and the interface will tell you when the angles match, so you’ll always be sure of correct pairing (for example, left and right in stereo; front left / front right, rear left / rear right and side left / side right in 7.1). You can experiment with various angles within the recommended range by hitting “reset” and starting again. The app even comes with a copy of Genelec’s speaker angling tutorial.
Genelec SpeakerAngle is a handy guide for beginners, but it’s also a great tool for professionals who need to set up speaker systems in different environments and studios quickly and accurately – so leave the tape measure at home.
Key Features
• Allows the accurate matching of speaker angles for optimum audio fidelity
• Easy and intuitive to use
• Works with both stereo and surround sound systems
• Works with any make and model speaker
• Works anywhere, with no need for WiFi or Internet connectivity
• Compatible with iPhone 4 and later; iPad 2 and later; and iPhone Touch 4th Generation and later
• Dedicated onscreen speaker icons move as the actual speaker is rotated
• Number boxes below each speaker icon continuously display the angle of the speaker as it is rotated
• Number boxes change color to let you know when your speaker is angled within industry recommendations, and when it is angled to the same degree as the other one in the pair (i.e. left and right in stereo systems; front left / front right, rear left / rear right, and side left / side right in surround systems)
• Detailed information screens provide a tutorial on speaker angling, as well as step-by-step instructions for using the SpeakerAngle app
