GRACE NOTES

How often has this happened to you? You walk into a friend's house and notice - yikes! - their loudspeakers are poorly aligned. Maybe they're pointing straight ahead, maybe they're toed way in, or maybe they're just pointing off in random directions. Whatever the problem, you'll note the missing sweet spot. But what can you do about it, without your gear? Well, there's an app for that.

Coming to the rescue is SpeakerAngle, from Genelec, the manufacturer of fabulous active speakers for homes and studios. The just-released app aims to help people properly align their speakers, no matter the manufacturer, to industry specs.

"The new Genelec SpeakerAngle app is a convenient and intuitive way to quickly set and confirm the angle of your speakers in your listening environment," stated Will Eggleston, Genelec USA marketing director. "This is a perfect tool for home theater owners, recording engineers, system installers and anyone else working to get optimum sound from any loudspeaker system. The possibilities are exciting, and we look forward to audio enthusiasts everywhere putting it to good use."

The $0.99 Genelec SpeakerAngle app is available on iTunes and works only on the iOS platform; at least for now, Android users will have to align their speakers the old-fashioned way. The app is quite simple to use: Aim the first speaker you wish to set up straight into the room. Then put an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch on top of the speaker. Onscreen speaker icons and a numeric display continuously indicate the angle from the speaker to the listening position as the speaker is rotated, and tell you when the angle is correct and when the angles of pairs of speakers are equal. The app works for both stereo and surround speaker systems, aligning all speakers for optimal orientation to the listening position. It even includes a tutorial on speaker angling.

Speaking of speaker angling, do you know one of the warning signs that you may be an audiophile? During a concert, you run onstage to properly toe in the musicians. In most halls, that's usually frowned upon. But if you must, be sure to use SpeakerAngle and put your iPhone on their heads.

You might as well get it perfect.