Newbie - speaker locations (1 Viewer)

Hi everyone

Can anyone help, I've got 5.1 surround and want to wire the speakers into the walls. The room dimensions are 12ftx14ft and the walls are 9ft high. How high up can I put the speakers? We have two seating areas, I take it you take the point in the middle and arrange the speakers around that? Did have a diagram of the room but I can't upload it! I've got a 42" plasma which is going on the wall.

Any helpful hints?

Thanks!

For the 2 rear surrounds, you want them about 2' above your ear level, when seated, and about 1' behind your ears. For the 2 front speakers, I would put them about in the center of your TV's height. And the center channel, either directly above or below.

Hi Sara. Welcome to HTF!

I prefer if you make all the tweeters at the same height which means you let the center speaker dictate the placement of all the others. This way special effects swirl around at the same level.

You can put all your speakers in the ceiling if you want, but get the speakers with an adjustable tweeter to point downwards.

You make your primary seating position the center and try to arrange the speakers to balance around this seat, not the center of the room.

Saddly - speakers nearer to your seat will be louder. But your receiver lets you add/subtract some volume from the center, and from the rears to compensate. Get a Radio Shack SPL meter and a copy of Avia or Video Essentials for a tutorial on how to level-adjust things.

Another suggestion: many fire-codes want CL3 or "in-wall" rated speaker wire. The difference is the fire-resistant insulator. I suggest you use 12 ga. You can get good stuff from places like www.partsexpress.com. They sell "Carol" brand by the spool.

For the spot where the wires go into the wall: install a plastic outlet box like they use for AC power sockets. Run un-broken wire to all your speakers and to your receiver through this box. Buy a blank wall-plate and cut holes to thread the wires through. Later, you can buy the expensive wall-plates with binding posts, but running un-broken wires gives you a more trouble-free connection, and leaves you options for later.

Label - Label - Label: Make sure you lable your wires every few inches around where it disappers into the wall. Buy wire-labels from radio shack, or use a Sharpie and wrap the writing with scotch tape. Years from now you may have to trim off a few inches to remove oxidized parts of the wire and you will be thankfull for the labels.

Hope this helps.

Thanks guys, that really helps. All the best. Sarah.

Sara -- was your question how high _can_ you put them or how high _should_ you put them. The should part is opinion but the going opinion seems to be that ideally all the tweeters are at the same height or close to it. However, I have to say that I personally don't notice much difference for placement of the surrounds as long as they're at least as high as the left/right fronts. Other factors in the placement seem to me (your mileage may vary) to swamp the height issue. Things like how far back they are and what they're near (furniture, type/smoothness of the ceiling, curtains, glass surfaces, etc.) seem to have at least as much influence. If you can, try just hanging them on the wall and then raising/lowering them to see what, if any, impact the height has.

Hi all.

Is it okay to put rear speakers very close to the ceiling.
I hanged the speakers from the ceiling, and both left & right
surround are facing each other, not facing downward. The ceiling-
speaker distance is about a few inches only.
So, is it ok or not ok? By the way, I already put the surround
speakers a little bit to the back, not right above the couch.
I just concern about the sound reflection by the ceiling.