New House - New Setup, Your Thoughts?

[mjhamre]

I'm moving into a new house in a couple of weeks (picked up the keys yesterday ) and will be setting up a new system. I went with on-wall speakers, Gallo Reference AVs, which I am using on stands in our rental and really like. The surrounds will be Gallo A'Diva TIs for size and style reasons, I have them as well and they sound fine. I am planning on wall mounting all of the speakers at the new place. I'm hoping to also wall mount the plasma (there is a window where I want to put it now) and have a low stand for equipment.

Here is the basic setup that I am planning on, furniture in blue:

The left speaker is hiding on the corner of the sub in the layout. Google sketchup is pretty intuitive, but its handling of text could definitely be better.

The left and right surrounds are comprimised positions, but it seemed like the wall adjacent to the couch would be way too close for a left surround (particularly a direct radiating surround). There is a vaulted ceiling that is quite high, and I don't really want a stand in the middle of the room, so I think the walls are the only good options for the speakers.

Questions:
1) Is having that left surround speaker in the hallway totally hopeless? I figured it pretty much is for anyone on the left side of the couch, but it is a big couch and if the main listening position is OK I may be fine with that. Seems like sliding it closer to the back speakers would just be wierd if the angle can't be matched on the right.
2) Does this setup look more reasonable than a 5.1 with the surrounds placed where the rear speakers are? Anyone have any other thoughts on speaker placement?
3) As far as room treatment goes, I think I have talked my fiancee into some panels on the left couch wall to minimize the early reflection from the left speaker, and there are heavy drapes on the slider on the right. I was planning to do some on-wall bass absorbers in the left hallway thinking that things may bounce around quite a bit in there. Anything else that I should be thinking about? I have used Room EQ Wizard to get frequency response graphs and bass decay times, but it will be at least three weeks before I can do that, and I would like to get some panels on order before that...
4) The window is about 5.5 feet off the ground, which I think will be about a foot below the top of my plasma. This is probably more of a question for a contractor, but can I just sheetrock it in with some kind of small vent (that would be behind the TV) to keep water from condensing inside the window? No no neighbors can see it, so I am not worried about what it looks like on the outside, and it seemed like it might be way cheaper than trying to take it all the way out (especially if I am forced to sell in a year or two). I suggested getting a 100" plasma to cover up the window but my fiancee was not having any of it .

Thanks for making it to the end of a long post. Any other thoughts or suggestions would be welcome.
--Matt

PS - Just noticed that HomeTheaterShack helped themselves to a bit of the image, I could not find a way to inline a jpg attachment, without posting it somewhere and they were handy. RoomEQ Wizard is really cool if you have not checked it out though, it's free, and works with a radio shack SPL meter and cables you probalby have, and it does frequency response graphs and such.

 

[tbewick]

I've found the best bet with speaker placement is to fiddle around with their positions until you get a satisfactory result. It might be useful having the walls around the rear and surround speakers as bare as possible, or having some diffusive objects like thick-framed pictures and bookshelves there. This will hopefully produce a nice surround effect. If there is a distracting tonal imbalance between the surround speakers, you could try setting the volumes for the rear and surround speakers slightly lower than their optimal volumes.

You might also want to try messing around with the tone controls or equaliser to improve the overall sound quality. My own set up is in a fairly lively room and I usually have the bass cranked up and the treble setting low.

Happy listening.

 

[mjhamre]

I've found the best bet with speaker placement is to fiddle around with their positions until you get a satisfactory result. It might be useful having the walls around the rear and surround speakers as bare as possible, or having some diffusive objects like thick-framed pictures and bookshelves there. This will hopefully produce a nice surround effect. If there is a distracting tonal imbalance between the surround speakers, you could try setting the volumes for the rear and surround speakers slightly lower than their optimal volumes.

You might also want to try messing around with the tone controls or equaliser to improve the overall sound quality. My own set up is in a fairly lively room and I usually have the bass cranked up and the treble setting low.

Happy listening.

Thanks for the ideas. It took two days for me to see your post because I was in moving hell... I'm looking forward to getting all the speakers in place and testing it out. Bought some cheap 16 gauge speaker wire to run temporarily until I can figure out where exactly I want them and how much of a pain it is going to be to run things in-wall. Hung the plasma while my fiancee and I were waiting for the comcast guy. Looks dorky in front of the window, but still looks nice up on a wall. Got a tilt mount wall mounting kit from amazon for $85 (made by peerless) and it was pretty easy to hang, just a bit nerve racking the first time you let it go...

I'll try to post pics and specific questions in a week or so once I get everything up on the walls...