7.1 configuration setup advice (w/ diagrams) (1 Viewer)

[JeremyJP]

Hello all. First, thanks to all who have made a great resource here. I have been reading/researching off this site for many months now. Learned many great things. Now I have a question of my own and I can't seem to find a specific thread about it.

I am in the process of moving and am setting up my living room/home theater room. I purchased a condo, and live by myself, so I can do pretty much whatever I want with the place.

The room is 15'x12' and is limited to running with the tv in the front of the room. See here, here and herehere (with the previous owners' furniture!).

Equipment is an Onkyo TXSR800, mains and center are Fluance and surrounds and rears are KLH 970A (straight firing). Television is a Hitachi 36" tube.

The room looks like this.

Red: mains
Yellow: center
Turquoise: LFE
Green: Surrounds
Blue: Rears

With the limited depth of the room I am unsure where and how I should mount the rear channels. There really isn't room to pull the couch forward 3-4', as the room will only be 8' deep at that point and the entertainment center is in the walkway as it is. Plus I want to put an arcade machine in the corner next to the LFE eventually.

I've run wire and put plates for the surrounds about 8" off the back wall at 7' high. I expect to mount the speakers at ~6' high. If I wanted to move them forward, they would end up at 7.5' high because of the window. Where they are now is "theoretically" correct but I don't know if the back wall will affect their sound.

The rear channels is what is killing me. The couch really is going to be flush against the wall. So if the rears are mounted at 6' they will just fire straight over my head. If they are angled down, they will be so close they will be localizable I think (??).

The options I have pondered are:
- Rears mounted at ends of couch at 6'
- Rears mounted at ends of couch at 6'angled towards listener
- Rears mounted on ceiling, ~1.5' from the back wall, aimed at the back wall and angled down, bouncing the sound back down into the listening area.
- Couch pulled about 6" away from the wall and rears mounted on stands about 2' high aimed at the ceiling (like this. (scroll down to the pair of diagrams, option B
- Surrounds moved forward 3-5' and rears mounted on the side wall where the surrounds are theoretically supposed to go.

Unfortunately my system is not set up yet. Tomorrow is my actgual moving day, and although all the equipment is here already I want to wait until Sunday to set it up because it'll be right in the walk way from the front door. Last thing I want is to crash into my new system with boxes. I suspect I may just have to wait and try setting it up on Sunday and try different placements and see how they sound, but any input/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Jeremy Pollack

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Great Diagrams.

First, that sub would work better in one of the back corners. Subwoofers reflect a LOT of sound from the nearby walls. The upper-right corner with the longest, un-broken set of walls is usually best.


I would suggest moving the side speakers forward so they are closer to the middle of the room. (The goal is to detect a change in the sound location so you want it farther away from the back wall.)

The rear speakers ... yes it's a problem. Of all you thoughts, my guess is:

- Rears mounted on ceiling, ~1.5' from the back wall, aimed at the back wall and angled down, bouncing the sound back down into the listening area.

would work the best. You want some DISTANCE between the rear speakers and the listeners heads.

You might even put the rears in the spots you orginally picked out for the sides, with some angle to bounce the sound off the rear wall.

It IS going to take some experiements. Be sure to level-adjust the rears with a SPL meter as you try different placements or angle changes. This will keep you from rejecting a superior position just because of a volume shift.

When you test, be sure to listen for POSITION of the sounds rather than other things. I might even suggest you disable the subwoofer while testing as it could just confuse things.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

PS: I'm going to move this to the "Speakers" fourm to hopefully get you more specific responses.

Welcome to HTF!

 

[JeremyJP]

Thanks for the welcome, Bob. And thanks for the feedback. Sorry about posting in the wrong forum. I wasn't sure if the speakers forum was just for about speakers or about layouts as well.

Subwoofer:
I may try putting it in the back corner. Maybe under a coffee table would fit. I'm a little concerned about too much bass, unfortunately, because this is a townhouse-style condo and that means the back wall is shared with my neighbor (an 80-year-old woman so maybe she can't hear it!). I ran an RG6 which I was going to terminate with RCA from the front to that side wall so I can move that sub anywhere along that wall with relative ease.

Surrounds:
Do you have any recommendations on the best ways to experiment/test? I was thinking of going and picking up the Avia Guide to Home Theater test disk. Are there any 7.1 test disks out there?

I'm going to radio shack to pick up an SPL meter. Can't start testing things until Sunday. I guess I'm going to have to leave the rear channel wires out and the not cut holes for jacks until later.

 

[EricSm]

Your speaker placement options are nearly identical to mine. I ended up putting the side surrounds directly to the left and right of my seating area, a little over seven feet up(there's a door way I had to navigate). I have them slightly angeled down, and while not an "ideal" situation it works out great. My concern was that they were too high, but I think in my particular application it works out really well. I then mounted the rear(back) surrounds about 3 feet above my listening position, angeled down. Again, far from how I'd want it in the ideal world but I genuinely have no other options and it certainly works. Now, this set-up would probably stink for music, but for movies it does a good job creating an ambient environment. Directional effects are spot on, as well. If you do properly calibrate the system you can at least make sure you aren't being dominated by your surround speakers. I had to bring my rears(surround backs) down -6db to compensate for their location. But, at no time have I felt the rears were "distracting" or too "present."

Good luck!

Edit:

I meant to mention that for 6.1 you can get the Sound and Vision Guide to Home Theater. It includes DTS-ES/EX, and DD-EX calibrations on it.

 

[Steve>JF]

Jeremy...You said you are using RG6 video coax cable w/ RCA connectors on each end for the sub line level connections? I never heard of that before, but it sounds like it would work. It is hard to terminate the RG6 with the RCA connections?

 

[JeremyJP]

Steve:

I was using RG6 because it is an unamplified signal and I wanted to run it down through the wall. I am not sure how its gonna work but I've read that it should be okay.

It isn't hard at all to get RCA on RG6. I am terminating it with screw-on F connectors and then using F-RCA adapters from Home Depot. Snapping that into a leviton quickport RCA jack on the wall.

 

[Steve>JF]

Cool!
Thanx!

 

[JustinG]

Steve,

I'm having a house built and pre-wired for surround. I almost freaked when I saw they ran coax for the sub. With some help from friends, I found out about the adapaters.

Here are teh parts express numbers:

RG6 to RCA adapter for plate mounting:
091-1200 $0.95 ea

Just terminate the coax with an F connector (male) and attach to the female end or the adapter.

BTW, my first post here. Good reading.

Hi Jer!

 

[JeremyJP]

Just an update - I've moved and got the 5.1 in and operational. Wow it sounds beautiful! Huge step up from where I was.

I'm waiting on mounting the 6 and 7 until I decide what sort of furniture I will have on the back wall. Vascillating between a pair of recliners and a couch. If I go recliners I will likely ceiling mount and shoot the audio straight down the wall. I'll slightly increase the delay and lower the volume to compensate for the out-of-position positioning.

If I end up w/ a couch I'll try mounting behind the couch facing up, ala dolby.

Oh, and a friend of mine had the Video Essentials disc, which is primarily a dolby pro logic tuning disc for audio. However, with the sound pressure meter and the built-in tuning on the TXSR800 it was already within one decibel of being perfect for all channels. The picture quality change, however--on my 5 year old hitachi tube that was a floor model before I purchased it and has NEVER been tuned or tweaked since I owned it--is astonishing! With the lights off/curtains drawn or when it is dark out, it is simply a world apart from the old picture quality.

edit: ps Justin - FOF!