Twalis Posted March 8, 2014 Posted March 8, 2014 Hi Folks I am building a new home and the builder is wiring my theatre room. The room measures 4.06m in length and 3.76m in width. They have asked me where I intend to put my speakers and what height, particularly in the rear. I am probably going to have a 5.1 system in it due to the size of the room. Should the rear speakers be mounted in the corner of the room near the cornices, or should they be head height when sitting? Any input would be greatly appreciated. Another side question. I have the option (although it costs) to put network points where every TV is, so I can hard wire into my internet. As I mentioned its not cheap. Should I just trust the strength of my wireless router and not do the additional network points throughout the house? Thanks again
Eth Nick Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 (edited) I did a bit of reading on this & the general consensus seemed to be that the rear surrounds should be wall mounted at least ~60cm above head height. Having them at head height (which I did when they were on stands), means they're susceptible to being blocked by backrests of furniture as well as other people who are also watching the film. I needed to find a balance for their (wall) height, as the surround-left needed to be clear enough of the people traffic below it, & yet not too high so as the tilt range limit of the wall bracket wouldn't aim the speakers too high & miss their intended focal point & have those effects fly over the seating positions. Not that they need to be perfectly aimed at the seats (as they're only ambient effects), but the nearer the better. Their heights ended up being 1900mm to the lowest part of the speaker, as you can see here... http://i.imgur.com/wtnNKfW.jpg Corner mounting isn't ideal, but surround speakers aren't impacted as much by this as your fronts/sub, so if you're forced to put one/both in a corner, I wouldn't stress too much. You can see the surround-right is in the corner - I had to do it as that speaker was the nearer to the seating position & if I were to move it out of the corner, onto the next stud along either wall, it would either have been too close to the ideal seat, or too far forward in relation to the surround-left. I also had the benefit of the surround speakers exhaust port located on the front, so corner placement wouldn't impact it so much. With your network points, you may be able to save some costs by utilising brush plates instead of dedicated Cat5(5E/6) sockets.... http://i.imgur.com/0WoAXpv.jpg you can maybe use one behind your router so all the cabling (labelled) from each room comes straight through & into your router. If you can test how things go on wireless first though, you may not need to do it, but it's generally the better option to go wired. Depends what your needs are. Can you arrange for holes to be drilled through the noggins in each room now (for internal walls) so that if the time comes to run these cables, they can easily be run down the walls to your wall plates? Edited March 9, 2014 by Ralfi
Twalis Posted March 9, 2014 Author Posted March 9, 2014 Cheers Ralfi - Really appreciate the detailed response. For the rear speakers - in terms of which wall to mount them on. Is it better to be the rear wall or the side wall? Thanks again
SandS Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 (edited) In Ralfi's room he has traffic under left speaker but if your build is just a HT room you can come down a bit. I was all ways told the tweeters should be at ear hight. I would go for the rear wall as you have limited room length and need to get seating in front of rear speakers. It also depends on type of speaker i e one driver or two at 90 degrees to each other. And I agree, drill holes in nogins and run draw strings down in the wall to where you might need cat 5 in the future. Edited March 9, 2014 by Sands
Eth Nick Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 (edited) On 09/03/2014 at 12:41 AM, Twalis said: Cheers Ralfi - Really appreciate the detailed response. For the rear speakers - in terms of which wall to mount them on. Is it better to be the rear wall or the side wall? Thanks again It might be easier to work this out if we had a picture of your room. But generally for your surrounds, so long as they're slightly behind the seating position, either the back or side walls are fine. I say 'slightly behind' because I found that when I had the surrounds on stands to the sides, because I have recliners, as soon as you recline back, those side positioned surrounds now appear slightly in front, which completely disorients the listener. In my situation, as mentioned, I was governed by that surround-left in both height & distance behind the seats, so the surround-right had to be mounted to mirror it as best as possible, hence the corner mount. I also kept in mind a future screen (size) upgrade, which would mean the seats would then need to me moved back a bit, to maintain ideal seating distance. Hence the swivel feature of the speaker wall mounts to cover this adjustment in furniture position. Also, if 7.1 became a possibility in future, mounting the surrounds to the sides (but slightly behind) give you the entire rear wall as potential rear speaker real-estate. Edited March 9, 2014 by Ralfi
bassmaniac69 Posted March 10, 2014 Posted March 10, 2014 Ralfi, do you have an AVR that has speaker correction built in to correct the placements of your units? Also, it's a great looking room, well done!
Eth Nick Posted March 10, 2014 Posted March 10, 2014 On 10/03/2014 at 4:56 AM, bassmaniac69 said: Ralfi, do you have an AVR that has speaker correction built in to correct the placements of your units? Also, it's a great looking room, well done! Hey, bassmaniac69. Yeah, the AVR (Yamaha RXV1900) corrects it. I could move everything (furniture, cabinet) 20cm across to perfectly centre them (AVR even calculated that same distance differential), but I'm not noticing anything 'off' where they are now, so I've left them for the time being. Thanks.
bassmaniac69 Posted March 11, 2014 Posted March 11, 2014 Thanks mate. My old RXV800 has no real calibration in it at all, so I'm kinda stuck on that side until I upgrade. I'm eyeing off a second hand 9.2 Yamaha here on the forums but may have to wait as I just bought a new screen and projector... In my current room I don't have any left or right walls to mount the speakers on, just close to the ceiling or the back wall, so I'm hoping if I do my next AVR will handle the correction.
CAVX Posted March 15, 2014 Posted March 15, 2014 Height for surrounds can be from 0 degree (ear height) to 30 degree elevation. One problem when mounting surrounds too high is that they tend to sound mono.
mmu16 Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 Also depends on what type of speakers you would use for surround duties. A front firing set would be best located on your back wall. A di-pole or tri-pole would be best located on your side walls, in line with your ears (maybe a bit higher depending on the speaker) at seating position. As far as internets go, get it all hard wired up. you wont regret it.
bassmaniac69 Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 (edited) On 15/03/2014 at 3:41 AM, MarkTecher said: Height for surrounds can be from 0 degree (ear height) to 30 degree elevation. One problem when mounting surrounds too high is that they tend to sound mono. My issue in my room unfortunately is that my surrounds will either have to go on stands, in two corners on my rear wall or at approx 2300 high on the two side walls.The two "side walls" in my room are glass windows (right side) and 4 sliding cupboard doors (left side) so I have nothing to mount there apart from near the roof. I am still inclined to go this way and angle them down and hope that a decent AVR will use correction to fix the positioning. The current speakers are front firing but I'd be inclined to replace them anyway so I'm open to suggestions for what would fit the best. Would the Yamaha and Audessey corrections fix having the speakers this high, or should I be looking at another solution? Edited March 18, 2014 by bassmaniac69
Mjr69 Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 Personally I went to great trouble to have all 5 speakers (large bookshelf with aluminium ribbon tweeters at the same height which is the same as ear height when sitting down. I chose bookshelf rather than floor standing to have the woofers also matching the same height front and rear. But the centre channel woofers are up by about an inch due to being horizontal). I also have my sub sitting directly underneath (and isolated) from my centre channel shelf. Also the speakers are positioned the same distance from the listener (sweet spot couch) front and rear.This also meant compromises in seating choices and equipment stands (TV and screen locations) to ensure there was no interferences etc.. Sooo if you want to you can be quite anal about it - you can. Does it matter that much? I think so but at the end of the day it has to be practical, affordable and fit in with the WAF.
CAVX Posted March 24, 2014 Posted March 24, 2014 On 18/03/2014 at 6:16 AM, bassmaniac69 said: My issue in my room unfortunately is that my surrounds will either have to go on stands, in two corners on my rear wall or at approx 2300 high on the two side walls.The two "side walls" in my room are glass windows (right side) and 4 sliding cupboard doors (left side) so I have nothing to mount there apart from near the roof. I am still inclined to go this way and angle them down and hope that a decent AVR will use correction to fix the positioning. The current speakers are front firing but I'd be inclined to replace them anyway so I'm open to suggestions for what would fit the best. Would the Yamaha and Audessey corrections fix having the speakers this high, or should I be looking at another solution? Regardless of the type of speakers used for the surrounds, their position is at the sides of the room. The best envelopment occurs at 90 degrees and the best imaging occurs at about 145 degree. This is why the ITR U placed them at 110, sort of best of both.
CAVX Posted March 24, 2014 Posted March 24, 2014 (edited) And yes YPAO, MCACCA and AUDESSEY will all take the height into account and adjust the time alignment to suit. Edited March 24, 2014 by MarkTecher
petetherock Posted March 24, 2014 Posted March 24, 2014 (edited) If I may share my own journey.... Sure Audyssey and the like can measure the distance and do some magic, but if the speakers are much higher than the suggested ear level or up to 2 feet above the ears in the sitting position, then they can't help in the 'transition' of sound. I.e. when there is a bullet whizzing past, it seems higher than what the director intended. And the front to back, and vice versa effects will also sound funny. This can be partly compensated by tilted the speakers down, but it's still inferior to having them at the recommended height whenever possible. And that's the basic thing - whenever possible. My own side surrounds are mounted about 1.9m above ground as the wall below that level isn't strong enough to take the weight. I placed my rear backs on bookshelves, and they are slightly lower than the sides. The sides use diploes to spread it out a bit and this certainly helps. Take a movie like Band of Brothers, and play episode two, the assault on the 88mm guns. You get fantastic whizzing of bullets across from left to right, back to front and if your speakers are well placed, you will be right in the thick of action. Cheers. http://peteswrite.blogspot.sg/2011/12/speaker-placement-really-matters.html Edited March 24, 2014 by petetherock
MCGHamma Posted April 23, 2014 Posted April 23, 2014 Is there any issue in putting the rear speakers for 7.1 in the ceiling?
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