What is best 7.1 speaker placement based on room design (1 Viewer)

[paulandcarroll]

[ATTACHMENT=477]Room Layout.pdf (176k. pdf file)[/ATTACHMENT] Unable to relocated furniture because of the layout of the room because of that we are limited on speaker placement. Here are some of my questions. Would moving the wall mounted speakers to the side walls create a better sound? They would have to mount 12 inches from ceiling on side walls due to window and side French doors. I have 10 foot ceiling. Should I mount the wall speakers from the ceiling to equal the standard 7.1 layout? What style speaker mounts should be used and what angles should they be set? Should I purchase a pair of speaker stands and place in front of rear speakers to equal 7.1 layout? Rear speakers are mounted on floor stands positioned at ear level. What is the best speaker layout for the 7.1 system based on the room layout???

 

[schan1269]

Forget 7.1 unless you move your couch off the wall at least 4 feet. Depending on your AVR, do height or width instead.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

If you're going to do 7.1, find a receiver that does Dolby ProLogic IIz or dts Neo:X to add height channels. Since you already have speakers mounted high and aimed down, these could be your height channels, and then you would wire other speakers in front for your left and right mains. As someone who has 7.1 in a rather confined space, I'm giving serious thought to moving my back surrounds to the front as height channels when I upgrade my receiver.

 

[Jason Charlton]

Paul, I read your story in the introduction section. So sorry to hear of the headaches and hassles you've been through. The good news, though, is that you are MUCH better off now than you were with the older all-in-one unit. I agree with what Sam and Stephen suggest - the benefit of a traditional 7.1 layout (with additional "surround back" speakers) works best when you have several feet behind the listening positions. Given your room layout, a "traditional" 7.1 implementation is not going to produce decent results. Also, as Stephen pointed out, your current speaker placement is already suited to take advantage of front "high" speakers. Your Onkyo 7500 system does have Dolby ProLogic IIz and page 50 of your manual outlines how you can configure the front high speakers. Instead of the surround back channels, your receiver can use ProLogic IIz processing to extract the height channel from the original digital surround track. Personally, I have never had a chance to audition a system set up with front highs, but Sam and some other members here have heard the result, and in the right environment, the results can be impressive. Best of luck and I hope the Onkyo system works out better for you in the long run.

 

[paulandcarroll]

We should of given a little more information than what we did. We purchased the Onkyo HT-S7500 7.1 Surround sound system. Here is the link for specs on the unit http://www.onkyousa.com/model.cfm?m=HT-S7500&class=Systems&p=f We are asking for help figuring out the best speaker placement based on the design of our room. The room is 13 feet wide by 20 feet long with 10 feet high ceiling. Thank you for taking time to answer our question. Paul and Carroll

 

[paulandcarroll]

Does this mean I should not use the auto room calibration when setting the speakers up. I originally set up the speakers the way you indicated but the auto calibration did not recognize the high speakers. I tried several options but could not get the calibration to notice them. It would show the standard 7.1 calibration.

 

[Jason Charlton]

You need to configure the speakers (as outlined on p. 50) first. Choose front high instead of surround back then make sure those settings are saved. Perhaps the settings didn't save correctly? After that is done, you can run the Audyssey function (p. 32) and it should recognize the correct speaker configuration.