speaker placement help

[Larkspeed]

pardon my seriously lacking paint skills but this is a digram of our living room.

As you can see our downstairs floor is basically open plan so there is a huge open corner in the room.

I am having a bit of trouble properly locating the surround speakers. in a Normal room I would just put them in the corners but that would make them uneven in this room.

As they are now they are overpowering because we are so close to them which in surround situations tends to push the sound behind us.

Our amp lets us specify how far away from the listenting position the speakers are placed but the lowest setting is 1 meter and it does not let us do the surrounds seperate.

To further complicate it the window is a big bay window that takes up nearly the entire wall on that side.

The amp also lets us specify if the surrounds are low or high so I was thinking of going higher on the wall and spreading them a bit to get at least a meter away but if I do that will it send the sound over our heads?

Anyway any input you guys can give on a good place to put the surrounds would be helpful.

Also please keep in mind that re-arranging the furniture is not an option

 

[alex24]

5.1? Then the rearmost satellite speakers are actually supposed to be side speakers rather than rears from what I understand. Why not put one the other side of the desk, parallel to the coffee table, then the other behind the side sofa on the other side of the room?

 

[Larkspeed]

because the other side of the room is a window

and if I put them further back so they are right beside the sofa then they would but off center by nearly a full meter because of the placement of the sofa which would adversly affect the surround

 

[alex24]

I think if the solution was an easy one you'd already have the answer, it's probably more hassle than it's worth considering the strange room layout, or at least the layout of the furniture being inflexible.

If you mount them high on the wall you can use brackets that angle the speaker downwards, rather than level, so the sound won't be over your heads but a bit more optimised.

 

[Larkspeed]

thats a good point I do have tilt and swivel mounts that came with them so i'll try a higher position with some tilt.

I have just looked at a speaker placement guide on the dolby site and they recomend a listening angle between 90 and 110 degrees on the surrounds on 5.1.

Higher, spread and tilted should fall within that range so i'll try that.

 

[lucid]

I have just looked at a speaker placement guide on the dolby site and they recomend a listening angle between 90 and 110 degrees on the surrounds on 5.1.

Yeah, but that's with the speakers facing the listener. Yours are at 90 degrees to the listener.


If your drawing is to scale, then I'd go with placing one near the word "sofa" and the other on the opposite wall near the words "corner desk". Whether the speakers are direct or bi-pole they'll just work better in those locations. The second choice would be floor stands, but I doubt that's an option given the corner desk.

 

[Larkspeed]

ok thanks for the advice guys.

I have moved them so that they are 1.7 meters off the floor, 1.5 meters from the center of the sofa.

Using the tilt and swivel wall mounts that came with them I have swiveled them inwards so they face at the sofa and tilted them down so they point directly at the center of the sofa.

A quick test with Star Trek nemesis shows you can't really tell they are there during normal dialouge but when the surround stuff kicks in they are definataly doing thier job giving clean motion to the sound and they seem pretty well balanced out.

 

[geowal19]

Put them in the corners over the desk and the window side but aim them at you. Same with the front left and rights.

EDIT: I men the front ones wider aprat as much as possible!

 

[lucid]

EDIT: I men the front ones wider aprat as much as possible!

That's not actually the best advice.

Apart from the aesthetic considerations which I think are important to the owner, putting the front speakers as wide as possible will create a hole in the front sound stage. That's not a good thing.

Dolby Labs give some pretty easy-to-follow recommendations about speaker placement for surround systems LINK Using that guide I have created the overlay of where the speakers should be. The range of angles from 22 degrees to 30 degrees is shown by the blue triangles. The best timing is achieved when the speakers are on an equidistant arc (red dotted line) or as close to the distance intervals as the amp's adjustment range offers.

 

[Larkspeed]

my pics is not realy to scale as I am horrible with paint but using the tv center as the center point that would put my fronts right in the blue arc you have given there so thier placement is fine.

And with the the rears mounted the way they are now and swiveled to point at the sofa center point it actualy puts them on a 100 degree listeneing angle which according to the dolby site is bang on what they should be.

I'm just now trying to learn my way through all the possible settings on the amp as there are loads of them and most I don't understand very well as I am used to just pre built all in one 5.1 units this is the first time I have bought a proper 5.1 amp and speakers.

Amp is a Sony STR-DB870 and the speakers are 1x SS-CNP2 (center), 4 x SS-MNP2 (Fronts and Rears) and 1 x SA-WMSP3 Active Sub.

I got them all fairly cheap so thought it made a good entry level system.

 

[krisboats]

and if I put them further back so they are right beside the sofa then they would but off center by nearly a full meter because of the placement of the sofa which would adversly affect the surround

The amp should be able to accommodate for the speakers being unequal distances from the listening position.