surround setup like this?

[Starmax]

I love the room from every standpoint except that a square space is tougher to tame acoustically then a rectangle one. My house, built in 1935, has plaster walls, beautiful wainscoating and 10 ft. ceilings. Are you saying to knock-out a wall? No way!! But even if I did, then what?

 

[mike c]

dolby, the auditoriums/theaters have multiple side surrounds because there are also multiple rows of seats.

 

[emorphien]

dolby, the auditoriums/theaters have multiple side surrounds because there are also multiple rows of seats.

Exactly. There can't be a sweet spot in an auditorium/theater, they have to try to make it sound as good as possible across as many seats as possible. As a result though the overall sound quality suffers and directionality is confused IMO.

I'd always rather use as few speakers as necessary to accomplish the job. In a smaller home theater where seating is more controlled it's easy to achieve much better results with even just five speakers.

 

[Starmax]

Dolby...your room with all those hideous speakers strung about, is butt ugly!

 

[rolyasm]

So what is everyone doing on say a 25 foot room, with 2 or three rows of seating. If you have the sweet spot on the front row, then the back to rows have the surrounds in front of them, by quite a ways. Even if you put a pair of speakers in between the first and second row, the speakers would still be around 8 feet in front of the back row. Just making approximations on the distance. Anyway, are most people just saying, " I am making my sweet spot in the middle of the second row, and the first and third rows will just have to suffer?" If someone did decide to put a pair of side speakers for each row, or 2 pairs located in between the rows, would you need any kind of a delay, or would this be a mute issue?
Roly

 

[emorphien]

or would this be a mute issue?

If you mute it, you won't hear anything! I suppose you might mean moot though.

Good question, I would imagine that with the right layout and the right choice in speakers you could expand that sweet spot to fit most of the seating without adding more and more speakers.

 

[Sheep]

More speakers behind you? Sheesh we need more on the sides and the front, as well as above and below the listener.

We should really shoot for 18.4 surround.

So you're saying Dobly is a genius...

SheepStar

 

[emorphien]

So you're saying Dobly is a genius...

SheepStar

indubitably!