Help with an odd-shaped room. (1 Viewer)

[BBOX]

Hi everyone, I'm new here and hoping for a little bit of help and some ideas on how to best array my home theater equipment. Currently I have an Onkyo HT-S3400 home theater system that I'm planning to use with my Vizio 60" TV. Additionally I have an XBOX 360 and Comcast cable box. I've included some pictures below that will give an idea of the layout of the room, which is going to have a significant impact on how everything will ultimately be put in to place. I'm really interested in getting as much stuff on the wall as possible to try to maximize my floor space too. Here are pictures and some corresponding comments, pictures flow clockwise around the room. First is the wall where the TV is currently situated. The TV is currently on a coffee table as a temporary measure, I have it in the same place I had my old TV, a 60" DLP. Currently the Onkyo receiver and speakers are put away as well while I figure out how best to proceed on this project.

Turning to the right you see the primary furniture of the room. The arm chair is my "captain's chair" where I consume pretty much all of my media from. I realize the room would probably benefit from more light as well.

Here's the wall opposite where the TV currently sits. As you can see, this wall presents several problems for getting an "ideal" surround sound experience as it will impact both speaker placement and seating.

Here's the wall to the left that leads to the front of the unit.

Initially I was thinking of mounting the TV on a similar angle to what it currently is as it would match up best with the orientation of the arm chair using a fully articulating arm mount, but it looks like that would wreak havoc on speaker placement, particularly the left and center channel. So my second thought would be to mount it in the center of the wall with shelving below it for the A/V components. This would put my primary viewing position off-center, but the viewing angle of the TV could make this a fairly negligible issue, then I could just mount the left, center and right speakers on the wall appropriately, perhaps using a mount with some adjustability so I can fine-tune the sound stage? The other major issue would be with placement of the rear speakers. The rear wall and furniture positioning means it's going to be impossible to place them equidistant from primary listening position (the armchair) but I believe the receiver will allow for some fine-tuning of the speaker functionality - if that will be enough to correctly position the sound stage, I don't know, but I was curious if anyone had any suggestions on positioning these speakers as well, or if something like ceiling or in-wall speakers would be something worth exploring. Other things worth noting: I have some financial flexibility but would prefer to use as much of my current equipment as possible, I am on the first floor of a two-story condo building and the wall the TV is currently up against is a common wall with the unit across the hall. I realize this is not going to be an "ideal" setup but I don't believe I'll be living here for more than about five years anyways so getting something "good enough" will suffice for the time being. Thank you in advance for your assistance!

 

[gartronics]

Ok, did some tinkering on it and here is what I came up with. Mount the tv on the common wall and build a few on wall shelves underneath the tv for your receiver, dvd and cable box. Then move the captain's chair out of the corner to line up with the tv. Then put other arm chair pretty much how it is, catercorner by the kitchen entry. That chair will be obstructed by the dinning table but it has to be that way to create a virtual rectangle in that space. Then you have 4 points to mount speakers on the wall. Then put a center speaker above or below the tv on the wall or a shelf on the wall. Put sub woofer in one front corner (space allowing). I drew up a plan, literally with pencil and paper. I tried to extrapolate an approximation of your floor plan from the pictures. Scale is probably off and things may be a bit tighter but it is just kind of a idea to get you started. Obviously the best seat will be the captain's chair. Well, maybe you can use that plan or I inspired a new plan you had not thought of, anyway, hope this helps.