Help me out with a tough speaker / room setup! (1 Viewer)

[Jeff North]

Well I am going to repaint the living room and once I am done the SO wants to re-organize the room. She does not want to have everything against walls and at right angles to each other.
We have an initial plan thought out which I have sketched up (shown below) and am looking for any suggestions to improve on it, or I am also open to any new idea's!
The major problems to the room design is there are so many windows / doors / radiators / other openings that there is not a wall longer then about 5 feet long! Also the stairs are there so we have to be able to get up there.
The speakers I have are the nOrh 4.0 (ceramic) and the SVS 25-31. I am thinking of hanging the rear speakers from the ceiling. The front speakers, TV and equipment is on a 18" deep open shelf approx 24" tall (shown in second image)
I await your sage advice
North

 

[BrianWoerndle]

The front looks good, but the rears are way off center. I would put the left rear between the window and the door to the porch. Put the Right rear on the other side of the bookshelf close to the window. You can then aim the one of 2 ways. Aim the at each other over the couch per Dolby. Or you can aim them towards the center of the room (right about where the 8 is at.) This is more general, less acurate placement of sounds, but a bigger sweet spot.
One more option that Dolby reccommends is to place the rears behing the couch facing towards the ceiling. That might be better for you since you don't have many walls to hang them on.

 

[John Garcia]

I'd put the entire setup in the corner where the bookshelf is, near the opening to the dining room and face the couch that way. This creates the same problem for the surrounds though, but you could put one on the far wall and one on the stairwell area (maybe above the closet door) or on the bookshelf there.

The spot you have it may not be optimum for the sub, so you need to try out it's placement before just deciding it will go there.

The other idea would be to turn it 180 degrees from what is shown, although the radiator could be a big problem.

This is very similar to how I have my room setup now.

Good old AutoCAD? Haven't touched it in years.

 

[Jeff North]

Brian,
I agree, the rears are not really optimal. I was thinking of doing that, but I was worried about the nOrh being too long. They are 17-18" long and have a rear port which should really be 6" away from the wall. This would be no problem for the right rear, but for the left rear, that would put the speaker above the couch. I could point them almost straight down but am not sure how well that would work.
The other problem is that in addition to being above the couch it would almost be in front of the couch - not the place for rear speakers. I would like to do something like you suggest but I just don't see how.
John,
Are you saying to place the TV speakers etc, in the lower left side of the picture/room? I havn't really thought of that, but I agree rear placement may be difficult and not symmetrical. I am not sure if my receiver has separate time delay for left and right rear speakers.
I could flip it 180 but I still have the exact difficulty with the left rear (explained above to Brian). Although maybe I could hang the left speaker so that it was in the corner of the opening at the dining room and that wouldn't look too bad. Hmmmm I will look at that tonight. Of course the problem is I will be heating up my electrical equipment with the radiator all winter (it is a cast iron radiator about 4' tall). I would have to setup something to block the heat.
Thank you both for the responses... it is great to have fresh opinions!
North
PS Yeah it is on AutoCAD. I actually use Mechanical Desktop 6 but I didn't think a full 3D model was worth the time and effort.

 

[John Garcia]

PS Yeah it is on AutoCAD. I actually use Mechanical Desktop 6 but I didn't think a full 3D model was worth the time and effort.

I used ACAD and MDT for many years, but last year switched to Inventor. It's better than MDT in some respects, and not so good in others.
Yes, I was suggesting the lower left corner. Surround placement is not quite as critical as the mains (unless you do a lot of multi-channel music listening), so long as you have room, they can go most anywhere. The surrounds are for "effect" even in most multi-channel music, so I would worry less about them.
What receiver? As for time delay, if your receiver is newer than a DD "ready" or Pro-logic only unit, then it should have independant distance and volume settings for each speaker.

 

[Jeff North]

Yeah, I know rears are mostly for surround, but I still would like to shoot for the optimal setup I can, taking everything else into consideration.
I have a Yamaha 5150 DD receiver. From what I can tell (just looked at the pdf of the receiver) it only has time delay for the rear speakers not and for center, but not rear left and rear right. Kind of sucks but what can you do. I can adjust volume for each independently but not time delay. If you really care, the pdf is at:
http://www.yamaha.com/menuitems/manu...c/HTR-5150.pdf
Page 39
We have Inventor (it is now shipping free with desktop) but we have not switched over to actually using it. There isn't really a push to do so because of anticipated down-time to learn a new program, as well as doubts that it is much better. Is it much better? Worth switching over right away? I know eventually autodesk will discontinue desktop, but when... who knows...
North

 

[John Garcia]

I see what you mean about not being able to adjust distance/delay for the rears. Volume will matter more than time delay, try out some different positions.

Inventor is actually very much like MDT. I found it actually easier to use - more intuitive - and learned it in no time at all (literally a few days of using it, having use MDT for some time). It takes a bit of getting used to after using MDT, but I like it. Where the difficulty comes is the drafting and file management. It's drafting not bad, but not nearly as simple or flexible as MDT/ACAD, and drawings are separate files associated to the model, which often complicates things.

I'm actually working for Autodesk, doing a contract for another company right now.

 

[Jeff North]

Sorry if this is getting a bit OT.

Did you have any training on Inventor before switching over?

I guess I better not say anything bad about my MDT crashing or anything since you work for Autodesk ;-)

North