Height and the ear

The geometry of arrival

Sound from a tweeter travels in a straight line to the ear. That line, its angle measured from horizontal, matters because a tweeter's dispersion pattern narrows as frequency rises — the highest frequencies arrive at full level only in a fairly tight cone on-axis.

Point that cone at the wall above your head and the treble rolls off before it reaches you, leaving a sound that is physically dull rather than tonally adjusted. No amount of EQ fully corrects for off-axis arrival, because the spectral character of the off-axis response is different in shape, not just level.

The rule is simple: tweeter centre at seated ear height. For most adults in a standard chair that means somewhere between 90 and 105 centimetres from the floor.

The seat itself matters — measure in the position you actually occupy, not standing. Slumping drops ear height by several centimetres; a raked cinema seat can drop it further. Measure, then set the stand height or aim the speaker to match.

Angling a speaker upward or downward by more than a few degrees to compensate is a partial fix at best. Tilting introduces a path-length difference between the tweeter and the woofer that shifts where their crossover region sums correctly, which can introduce a comb-filtered dip in the range where a great deal of vocal intelligibility lives — roughly 2 to 5 kHz. Better to get the height right and keep the baffle vertical.

Surround and height speakers follow the same logic wherever they have tweeters and wherever you care about them. A surround at shoulder height fires past you; one level with or slightly above the ear wraps around you. The difference is audible in almost every room.

The shortest path to better treble in a home cinema is a tape measure and the willingness to move a stand. The electronics are irrelevant until the geometry is correct.

The seat itself matters — measure in the position you actually occupy, not standing.