Speaker setup questions

[Allen Longcor]

Ok I am contemplating changing my current setup. My new setup will be this:

Room has dimensions of about 10'x 12' (guesstimate)

At front of room will be TV with center channel and towers

At the back of the room will be a couch

Now I have some questions about setup. At the Dolby website they recommend having the rear channels about three feet above the seated position. I plan to slowly upgrade my speakers, and the surrounds I want can't be mounted on the wall, they have to use stands. Should I get stands as tall as I can? The tallest stands I have found are 42" tall, but would a 36" stand work as well? Does it really matter how high the surrounds are in practical listening? The couch seat is about 15" or so off the ground. I will be using the system for movies and multichannel listening (SACD and Pro Logic II).

Now on to placement of speakers. Right now I have the front three speakers lined up with each other. Should I bring the towers out in front of the center channel or leave them alone. I'm thinking leave them alone due to the small size of my room. For the surround speakers I am going to have them slightly to the rear of the seating position, but not completely behind as it is recommended on the dolby sight. They will be rather close to the wall though, is there any problems you have encountered with this?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[Frank Zimkas]

Sounds like you've got a good plan of attack. The Dolby, and many others, offer great info on perfect placement but they don't always cover real life configurations. You said that the surrounds that you want could not be wall mounted...why not? There are lots of speaker wall mount kits on the market as well as small shelves that might do the trick.

 

[Allen Longcor]

Well I am going to get the Diva 2.1 speakers. I read somewhere that you could drill some holes in the back and they could be mounted that way, but I'm not handy with tools and don't want to take the chance that I drill through some important stuff

I think that with the couch they will be too high also, because my current surrounds are up near the ceiling, but my bed is rather high off the ground so it's not too bad for now. I could mount them lower, but that would be two more holes in the wall. My thinking is that the surrounds will be more prominent closer to the listening position (on the stands) and will provide a greater effect. So now I can actually hear the ambience of the John Waters Live SACD. I was just wondering how others decided on their setup when they could not wallmount their speakers.

 

[Dave Schofield]

Many speaker brackets allow for no drilling, by squeezing the sides of the speakers. Someone else just posted a thread about this today: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...threadid=66059

 

[Allen Longcor]

Thx for the link. I am thinking that I would rather have them on stands though. I don't want to put two more holes in the wall because the current placement is too high.

 

[Allen Longcor]

No one has any thoughts on proper setups? I find that hard to believe hehe

 

[Allen Longcor]

Ok ok, I guess I'm going to go with the tallest stands I can find and assume everything is gonna be ok lol.

 

[Frank Zimkas]

Sorry, but my earlier post should have said WWW.Dolby.com
You'll find lots of good info on placement. If possible keep the couch away from the rear wall.

 

[Jason Bell]

Hi Allen I've got limited experience with HT but with experimenting with different placements for my rears I decided that I like them about 3 ft back 7 ft away to the left and right and place the tweeters about 1 ft above ear level and just slightly toed in towards my listening position. Once I calibrated with a SPL meter this sounded really good better than with the tweeters being higher. My goal was to just get the speakers high enough where the tweeter and midrange would be above my couch. Do speaker stands get unstable once you get up around 42" high, guess that would depend on which ones. I also have my rears corner loaded and dont notice a decrease in quality. I have them set to small though so there isnt much chance of them getting boomy or anything. Well good luck with your setup.

 

[Allen Longcor]

With my room I am very limited in what I can do, so basically I'm going to move the couch a little bit out from the wall, but not too much or I'll be right in front of the TV. Then place the speakers near the back wall facing in. This seems like the best option for me unless someone can change my mind. I've looked at the dolby site and decided that was the best plan of attack.