Speaker Placement for 5.1 System Advice needed

[hurtz]

Hey folks,

so I recently moved to a new place and now have a little more space at my disposal. But since I can't dedicate the entire room to being a home cinema the placement of speakers and furniture gets a little more complicated.

So maybe someone has a good idea for the placement of the 5 main speakers, or even better 7. Also I'm not sure if the room is fit for using 7 speakers. Any advice/ideas for a better setup is appreciated.

The picture should be self-explanatory, this is the current setup, the little boxes with "S" are the speakers...

cheers,
hurtz

 

[Drewfus]

Trial and error is usually best with this kind of thing. Try a few different configurations to see what sounds best. Are your L/R and Ls/Rs front ported? Hopefully they are sealed or front ported because it looks like you want to put them close to the wall. Try to move your L/R's a little further apart if possible.

IMO, 5.1 will be fine for your purposes here. Surround sound is a great way for electronics companies to sell you more crappy complicated products you don't really need. Keep in mind this is coming from a two channel stereo purist though. 7.1 belongs in dedicated theatre rooms that are calibrated and designed for the purpose. Then again I think the same for 5.1 too...

 

[Jsixis]

looks well laid out to me, myself I don't point the rear channels that far off but what ever you like is all that matters. For the sub I found out on another board to put the sub where you sit and crawl around on the floor till you find the loudest sound and put the sub there.

 

[chrisb]

looks well laid out to me, myself I don't point the rear channels that far off but what ever you like is all that matters. For the sub I found out on another board to put the sub where you sit and crawl around on the floor till you find the loudest sound and put the sub there.

Well, the loudest output at a particular position will not necessarily provide the smoothest response or most even distribution, and the "best" location sonically can often be impractical, even in larger spaces.

This room does appear to have some constraints as to furniture placement, so without dedicating solely to the audio system, I'd be inclined to leave the woofer as is, but try to move the L&R mains further apart, and rotate the rear surrounds to fire towards the center. And I wouldn't even consider "upgrading" to 7.1 or whatever's after that for this room.