Will my speaker placement ruin my home theater? (1 Viewer)

[james e m]

I need help with speaker placement issues. Okay so I don't have much room to deal with (about 8 feet) when finding room for my sub, monitor 11's , tv and center channel, and the equipment rack. The best I can do without a TON of extra work is only allowing 8 inches between the Monitor 11's and the tv and center channel. Will this significantly mess up my sound field? The thing is that my home theater will only be set up like this until October, when I get an apartment. Does anybody have any advice on this, am I killing my home theater? Any info would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
james
if you look here you kind of get an idea of the space I have to work with. The picture is of my older set up.

 

[Thomas_A]

I realy dont see any issue with your stuff being so close together...since it is a small area to begin with. I dont think you will kill your system with the space limitations. Besides..october will come faster than you know

 

[Bob McElfresh]

I can make some suggestions.

Pull the L/R speakers into the room. Try to get the distance from your head to all 3 tweeters the same. This might give you room to put the sub behind one of the speakers in the corner.

Toe them in a bit to avoid early side-wall reflections. Use 2-channel music and try angling them so they focus a foot or two in front of the primary listening position. Other options are to focus ON the listening position, or a foot or two behind it. (A inexpensive laser pointer works well for this adjustment)

(Make sure you use a SPL meter to check the levels after each angle change. You might reject a superior angle just because the volume got a little quieter.)

You might invest $35 in a box of acoustic foam and put them on the side walls to reduce/diffuse the side-wall reflections. (Sit in your primary listening position while a friend moves a mirror along the side wall. Have him move the mirror around until you can see the tweeter of the speaker in the reflection. Put the acoustic foam here).

Get some rubber door-wedges and put two of them under that center speaker to give it a little tilt. Or use pink-rubber erasers to make feet. You want to break the connection between the speaker cabinent and TV. Pull the center speaker forward so the face over-hangs the face of the TV by about 1/4 inch. (Think of the sound as water dripping off the face of the speaker. You dont want it to smear down the front of the TV.)

With that sub, I hope you have your L/R speakers defined as SMALL. But even with this, those speaker cabinents might be muffled by sitting right on the floor. Small speaker stands can be used, or try the pink-rubber eraser trick to make feet. (Once again, you are trying to decouple the speaker cabinent from the floor).

Hope this helps.

 

[james e m]

Thomas...Thanks for the advice, I know you're right October will be here before I know it.

Bob...Thank you for the wealth of information! I have little slices of angled wood holding up my center channel as of now. And I moved my center channel so it 'hangs' a little off the tv.

I don't have my mains set to small becuase I don't like my sub, it sound to boomy to me. When I have the mains set to large the bass sounds a little more acurate to me. My main speakers are on spikes so I hope that will do the trick. Thanks again!

james

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Good to know about the wood feet and the spikes (the pictures dont make these obvious).

If you have some thick blankets and can hang them on the side walls, it can give you an idea if some acoustic foam might help the sound. In general, large reflecting surfaces near the speakers are a bad thing. Your small TV & rack is actually better for sound than my enclosed cabinent and RPTV.

 

[JamieZ]

hey you got about the same setup as me. I have a all cerwin vega system with the same front speaks as you. I am thinking about buying the AR s108ps sub because my mains produce so muc bass.

Jamie

 

[Paul Clarke]

Bob and everyone else have pretty much hit this nail right on the head. I can't add much except to say I have a similar spatial situation and did put my sub behind the left main on a piece of granite. I eventually solved the 'everything touching everything else' problem by changing my front Pioneers (dimensionally similar to your C/V's) with taller thinner Wharfedale towers. The sound imaging and staging is still compressed but quality speakers and minor tweaking can make up for a lot of spatial deficiencies.