rear surround placement concerns (1 Viewer)

[David-Pen]

Hello audiophilites. I am having a house built and am planning a 5.1 or possibly 6.1 HT system. my concern is with the rear speaker placement. The room is about 15x15 and the couch will have to be against the rear wall. I will be using Klipsch RS-3 surrounds. I was planning on placing them about 7 ft from the floor on the back wall. I cannot place them on the sides in this room. will the sound be compromised too much . or will angling them down slightly make up for this. .The problem I have is that the house is sort of an open floor plan and the room where the HT system is going only has three walls. There is no wall to the right (when sitting on the couch) just behind, left and front. so I dont have much choice of placement. Has anyone had experience with mounting the RS-3's on the ceiling? pointing down? The idea of mounting the RS-3's vertical and angling in sounds like it may give me more sound dispersion down towards the listening position. another concern will be that the left surround will have a wall for the sound to bounce off of to the left of it, but there is no wall for the right speaker to bounce of of. Does anyone have this type of setup? and if so how does it sound?? This is my first venture into HT so maybe im being to picky, but i just want to make sure it sounds as good as it possibly can. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Ron Krebs]

Well first of all I would say that 6.1 is out of the question since you have a rear speaker that is directly in the back. That and I personally don't think that 6.1 is all that much better than 5.1, but that is only my opinion. Second of all, you might want to consider installing your rear surrounds in/or on the ceiling. That will give you a better surround Dispersion. The trouble sonically you are going to have is that open wall. It will sound dead on that side. The only thing you can do is to treat that other side wall to at least try to match the dead sound on the other side. Well maybe dead was the wrong word, but you know what I mean.


Ron

 

[Troy Swope]

I have a similar problem, and have the exact same speakers, my problem is a window on the right surround side. So my surrounds are too far forward (not really surrounds at that point) I think I am going to try moving mine to the ceiling and then angling them down toward the listeners ear!

any other input from the great members of this forum would greatly be appreciated!! thanks.

 

[JayDaniel]

FWIW, I changed last year from having my surround speakers (BIC DV-52s) stand mounted at ear level to wall mounted near the ceiling angled down. I much prefer the sound with the speakers up high. The dispersion and realism of surround effects in movies is much better, to my ears at least. David, I have a similar room to yours - 3 walls - except mine doesn't have a back wall (it opens up into a much larger rec room). Sonically, I think that's better than missing a side wall.

Perhaps you could get a couple of 6' or 8' step ladders, set the surrounds on top, and give it a listen. Doesn't hurt to try.

 

[NathanH]

Most recommend that for a 6.1 setup, you have 2 rear channels to avoid the directional association problems associated with the human ear, and prepare for 7.1.

Thought:

For a 6.1 setup, perhaps you could put the 2 rear channel speakers in the ceiling and angle them down towards the rear wall, which would bounce the sound off the rear wall and create a more diffuse sound field than if the rear channels were directly behind the listeners in the wall. Then put the side surrounds in the left and right walls at the same height. Worth a try using those step ladders?