Dennis Ellis

Need some set up advice.

GOing to be moving into a new house in a few months and have some basic setup questions. Right now I have the jbl nsp speaker package(4 sat's and n-center) and a sony 10" sub.
I would like to replace the sat's. In all honesty I am not 100% satisfied with them. The new house has a fireplace with a cut-out above it for the tv to sit recessed into the wall. I was thinking of getting some JBL floorstanding speakers to replace the fronts. I'll keep the n-center but I want to replace the rears with something else (not sure on those).
BTW, I am pretty sure there will be hardwood floors.

How will floor standing fit into this setup?
ISnce they will not be right beside the tv, will that be awkward? The center channel will be a foot or so above them also.

ANy help is greatly appreciated.

Mark C.

Forgive what may be a dumb question. I'm trying to picture your set-up. How high are your ceilings and what are the approximate room dimensions?

By your description, I see a cut-out in the wall for a television over your fireplace. This would seem to be pretty high up on the wall, which makes me think floorstanders or bookshelf speakers on stands won't work. Am I getting the right picture here?

Dennis Ellis

The ceilings are high and the room is mid/large sized. Sorry I can't give actual dimensions because the house hasn't been built yet. We've been into a house with basically the same floor plan but I can't remember how high the ceiling are or the l x w.

Supposed to meet with the builder this week and maybe can get some plans to give better details.

But you are correct about the speakers being to each side of the fireplace and the tv housed directly aboiveit.

BTW this is a gas fireplace, not a "real" one.

Dennis Ellis

Anybody else?

Dennis Ellis

Here's a similar set up but there will be more room one each side of the fireplace.

Mark C.

That's a tough one, especially when trying to match the center channel with the fronts. It might be best to consider in-wall speakers or wall mounted speakers, rather putting floor-standers so far below the picture.
Maybe what you need to do is check out speakers similar to your JBLs to see if you can find a sub-sat system more to your liking.
I suggest you check out M&K, NHT and Paradigm. Also, Velodyne has a new sub-sat system that is getting very positive reviews. It seems to me with the structure of your layout, you're best sticking with some kind of sub-sat system rather than trying to fit floor-standers into the picture.
Good Luck.

Lew Crippen

Thanks for the picture—it really helps. As has been mentioned this will make the center speaker pretty high. I would suggest that you tilt the center speaker down a bit (so that it is aimed at the listening area). Ordinarily it is a good idea to have the tweeters of the speakers to be at the same height. And some tweeters have directional sonic characteristics (compared to mid-range/bass speakers), it helps to have them at (more or less ear level). So a slight tilt will compensate for this deviation from the ideal.

Floor standing mains ought to work well. Two more things to consider: it helps to have your speakers matched (timbre matched) and the center speaker is by far the most important for HT—so you might want to consider replacing all of your front speakers at the same time. Keep the match across the front (it is not quite so important for the surrounds to be timbre matched as it is for the fronts, but of course you don’t want to have a different sound altogether) and at the same time make sure that your center is of the same quality as your other two front speakers.

¡Time is not my master!

Dennis Ellis

thanks Marc.
that's kinda what I thought. My first instinct was to go with some smaller sat's.
I have to have something very small. My JBL's aren't gonna work.
Are the velodynes these?
THat's way over what I want to pay.

Are the others you suggested around the same price?
The thing that bothers me is that a friend of mine (his setup in the pic above) only has a sony HTIB and it sounds really sweet.
It was 500 though. I just need the 5 speakers. His also came with the sub (I've got the sony) and the receiver (I have a onkyo 575x).
Keep some ideas coming please.