Survey/Tips...How Far Apart the rear surround speakers in your 7.1 system? (1 Viewer)

[JedW]

I was wondering how far apart you guys with a 7.1 system put your rear channel speakers (not the side surrounds) and also how far away from them is your seating area. My couch is going to be about 2.5 to 3 ft away from the back wall with the speakers mounted about 7 ft off of the ground. I am thinking about 3 ft apart. Any Tips?

 

[dan-0]

check out the dolby site for info:

dolby site

If I recall correctly. Dolby suggests your side surrounds to be 2 to 3 feet above your head and directed at each other. For the rear centers, they should be at the same height at the sides, but angled downward to the listening area. There is no mention of ideal distance between the listener and the rear wall. However, the rear centers should be at a 90degree angle to the listener, using that angle then should determine the correct distance between the speakers. Otherwise, dolby suggest 4 feet at a minium.

Due to room restrictions, my rear center are only 3 feet apart, and aproximately 5 behind the listening area. Sounds good to me!

 

[ChrisTheg]

Well it depends on the dispersion of your rear speakers. If they have relatively good dispersion then you can put them further apart but it is not that critical.

 

[Neil Joseph]

Moved to speakers. (sorry I have a single rear centre)

 

[Kevin_Wadsworth]

I have floorstanding rear speakers against the wall behind the couch. They're about 11 feet from the listening position and are about 7 feet (a bit more than the width of a piano) apart from each other.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Also depends a little of what soundfields you're using. I've seen that for THX Ultra2, that you can actually put them side by side. But for Logic 7, you can space them pretty far apart.

A wise man (named Sanjay ) once said, make sure that the rears are at least as far apart as it takes for you be able to tell that they are discretely different speakers when cycling test tones through them. In other words, you want them to be far enough apart so that they sound like 2 different speakers in your set up.

For me, I have them in an equilateral triangle behind me. 5 ft from me each, and 5 feet apart.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Article on DPL IIx in the latest S&V. No distances, but for the rears in a 7.1 setup (utilizing DPL IIx), they recommend 135 - 150 deg from the front. And, I was interested to see that they also recommend 90 to 110 for the surrounds, but they go on to say that directly to the side isn't so great and that slightly behind the listener is preferred. (I found out this exact same thing in my system. When I had them at 90 deg, waaaaay too localizable. Moving them back a little helps a lot.)