Speaker Setup Need Help! (1 Viewer)

[RobV]

Hello,
I am turning a room into a dedicated home theater and I am having problems with speaker placement. The room is only 22'
long, The first 11' is 15' wide and the last 11' is 20' wide. I want to put in a couch for the back row as far as possible so as to use a bigger screen,hopefully on the back wall. But now my problem is the rear speaker, Do they have to be directly behind you or can you put them on the side?
Or how about above you over your head? The ceiling in the back of the room starts at 6' and then goes up to 11' at a slant of course. I was thingking of flush mounting them about three feet up from the star of the ceiling, Would that
be Ok? I would realy love the help. Thank You..

 

[Anthony Stephan]

"Only 22' Long"??
"Only" that's a pretty big room man.
And you want to put the seating at the very back?
You putting in a 200" screen?
Here's what I would do.
I would put my seating back to that 11' mark, where the walls are 15' apart. Then place dipoles at the sides of the listening position.
Now, you haven't mentioned your electronics yet, but if you are buying new, you should invest in at least 6.1 maybe 7.1, which would allow you to use your back wall for surrounds and if you wanted to, the place you mentioned before on the slanted wall would work.
Lot's of questions to answer before you start to think about speaker placement.
What kind of display? What kind of electronics/gear? What kind of speakers are you looking at?
I would nail all those down and then think about what to do with the room.

 

[Vin]

Rob, I think Anthony's suggestion to bring the couch a little closer to the screen is a good one.
My HT room is also 22' in length and the distance from the screen of my 60" analog RPTV to my head

is about 12' or so and it seems just right. I wouldn't want to sit any furthur back than this.
As far as placing the surrround speakers, Dolby actually recommends placing them on the side walls facing the listeners but this type of arrangement wasn't feasible in my room so they're mounted about 6' behind me on the back wall facing forward......this seems to work quite well, BTW.
Hope this helps.

 

[Craig Robertson]

first, click here to go to the 400Q forum and do some research to find out optimum screen size, from there you can calculate seating placement. remember, the bigger you blow up the picture, the farther away you need to sit so you can't see the flaws, and the dimmer the image will be. you will not want to be too close to the rear wall, you'll never get bass right for those seats. see if you can get your hands on a June 2001 SGHT, Russ Herschelmann's column entitled "Home Theater Architect" has some formulas for figuring speaker placement, and his article "Location, location, location" has some good basic info on subwoofer/room interaction. Russ is a little long winded and the theories will be difficult to apply to your room, since it is not rectangular, but they'll give you someplace to start.