Surround Speaker Positioning

CornishVillan

Novice Member
Joined
May 19, 2014
Messages
7
Reaction score
0
Points
27
Age
41
Hey one & all,

I have a slightly awkward shaped / laid out room for home cinema, but want to know if anyone has any experience of setting up surround speakers of a 5.1 system when display & LCR speakers are off centre from viewer? My living room layout is shown roughly below.

upload_2014-5-21_23-19-32.png


The dark rectangular area in the centre is a woodburner and chimney stack, so i don't think it is viable to wall mount the TV there.

Basically, is it worth trying to setup wall mount speakers either side of the main sofa or would i just be better off investing in better LCR and Sub and forget surround? Or can the setup tools of AVR's like the Sony STR-DN1040 or Yamaha RXV675 cope with this sort of positioning and still present a good home cinema experience?

I really wish i had a square room with no windows!

Thanks in advance everyone.
 
I'm sorry to say that it will not work. If you place speakers to the left of where you are sat then they all sound as though they are emanating sound from the left of you. The front speakers need to be positioned to either side of you for stereo reproduction with the centre speaker slap bang in front of you. There's no tech or gimmicks that can compensate for your location in relation to the speakers and if you want a 5.1 surround sound setup then consider rearranging the room so that the speakers can be correctly located around a listener as opposed to having them to one side of the listening position. The best AV receiver money can buy will still not resolve the issue if you cannot fascilitate the correct placement of the speakers. The same goes for a soundbar and this too would need to be in front of you and not to one side.

Put the TV in front of the window or the garden doors and the issue is resolved. A more drastic option is to either remove or decommission the chimney breast and/or the fire it uses and place the TV there.
 
Last edited:
Thanks Dante. I had thought/feared as much, but still held out hope for a way of doing it. Not sure if the better half would be too happy with me blocking the window with a 60" telly.

Just to be clear, are you suggesting that even the fronts won't work with this layout or just the rears? I'm tempted to go 2.1 and look at a higher price bracket set of speakers.
 
On whichever sofa you are seated then the two stereo fronts will not always be positioned so that your left ear gets audio from the left speaker and your right ear gets audio from the right speaker. Stereo doesn't work unless this can be facilitated. You may get some degree of stereophonic imagary, but only in a limited seating area and even this will be less than you'd ordinarily want to achieve in order to justify the expenditure.
 
Last edited:
Thanks again Dante... No point kidding myself *sigh* looks like I'll be waiting a few more years for my home cinema system. Perhaps the chimney conversion idea is something I can think about. The house is so well insulated, I don't think I need to use the woodburner anyway.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom