Speaker placement for awkard shaped dorm room..?

[hizzaah]

Getting a low budget Onkyo ht-s5400 7.1 system as a christmas gift and I'm having a hard time figuring out where I'm going to put the speakers in my dorm room.

With the limited space, I can't decide if I should do a 5.1 and have two high's in the front or figure out where to squeeze in 2 more speakers in the room.

The catch is that I can't drill into the walls or mess up the paint. So I'm limited to stands pretty much unless I can figure out a way to rig speakers up with those 3M command strips/hooks.

Here's a MS paint sketch of the room and dimensions:

The orange box is the placement of the tv, and the green circles are where the front L/R and center are going to go. The sub will be going underneath the desk that the tv is sitting on.

Any suggestions for speaker placement? or how to hang speakers?

 

[Adam]

Hey, welcome to the forum!

Any chance that you'd be willing to move your TV to the wall with a 91 3/4" length? That wall seems to give the best chance of having a TV centered in a sound field.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

hey, welcome to the forum!

Any chance that you'd be willing to move your tv to the wall with a 91 3/4" length? That wall seems to give the best chance of having a tv centered in a sound field.

+1 ................

 

[hizzaah]

Hey, welcome to the forum!

Any chance that you'd be willing to move your TV to the wall with a 91 3/4" length? That wall seems to give the best chance of having a TV centered in a sound field.

thanks! been reading on here for a while, but I never had any equipment of my own.

I sort of mis-represented the size of the door on that wall a bit (my paint skills are not that good lol), but In order to have the tv on that wall I would have to also move the desk it's sitting on which would make the door not be able to open..

 

[Adam]

...which would make the door not be able to open..

Set the system up right, and you won't want it to.

J/K. If it were me, just by going off of the room layout, I'd stick with 5.1. The center channel will help with dialogue, and you should be able to get the two front speakers on either side of the TV (right?). One of the rear speakers would go in the corner next to the bed, and the other rear could go somewhere near the other side of the bed (or the other side of wherever you sit to watch TV). The exact placement won't be critical because of the Audyssey auto calibration.

As for mounting the speakers - are you not allowed to make holes as long as you fix them? I know that when I was in a dorm, we weren't supposed to make any holes, but as long as we fixed them up so that you couldn't tell, we never got in trouble for it.

 

[hizzaah]

Set the system up right, and you won't want it to.

J/K. If it were me, just by going off of the room layout, I'd stick with 5.1. The center channel will help with dialogue, and you should be able to get the two front speakers on either side of the TV (right?). One of the rear speakers would go in the corner next to the bed, and the other rear could go somewhere near the other side of the bed. The exact placement won't be critical because of the Audyssey auto calibration.

As for mounting the speakers - are you not allowed to make holes as long as you fix them? I know that when I was in a dorm, we weren't supposed to make any holes, but as long as we fixed them up so that you couldn't tell, we never got in trouble for it.

I suppose I could get away with it if I went through the trouble of repairing it afterwards, but seeing as how these are brand new on-campus apartments I feel like they might be a bit more uptight about what i do to their walls..

it seems 3M has wire hooks that should work with the hanger on the surround speakers. the large ones are rated to 5lbs and the medium are 3lbs. According to newegg, the surround speakers weigh in at 2.2lbs. Which size should I go with?

I came up with two possible set ups:

Setup A

the two behind the tv would be highs. since i'm not using mounts, the rear speakers can only face one direction. So, should they face towards the bed, or face towards the tv?

Setup B

(the window is set in ~6" so I could fit a speaker in there if I wanted. not sure if that's a good idea or not though)

 

[hizzaah]

Also, what should I be looking at to contain the sound to my room? Something to keep the sub from shakin the downstairs and stuff to keep the audio from bleeding into the hallway and through the wall into the guy's room behind me..?

I'd like to crank it up, but I dont want to be "that guy" in the apartments lol..

 

[robc1976]

Hey, welcome to the forum!

Any chance that you'd be willing to move your TV to the wall with a 91 3/4" length? That wall seems to give the best chance of having a TV centered in a sound field.

Agreed, even maybe the 141" wall...with the speakers being in the indent like it is may not be such a great place for placement.

 

[robc1976]

Also, what should I be looking at to contain the sound to my room? Something to keep the sub from shakin the downstairs and stuff to keep the audio from bleeding into the hallway and through the wall into the guy's room behind me..?

I'd like to crank it up, but I dont want to be "that guy" in the apartments lol..

For the sub you should get a Subdude or something close to it to de-couple it from the floor.

 

[hizzaah]

I'm kinda stick with the tv bring where it is because I have other furniture in the room so I don't have very many options as to where I can move the bed, the two dressers, and the cabinet.. Just gonna have to make due for now

Is there something cheaper than a subdude I can use?

 

[thaisbeats]

maybe if you move your bed off the wall a little you can place the side speakers further back towards the bed as how a 7.1 system is meant to place or even if you hadnt got your receiver yet you may try for a yamaha with presence speaker option and place a 5.1 with the extra set of speaker as front presence if you have so many speakers making the most of every one of them in a confide space

 

[thaisbeats]

my 2nd opinion is if no drilling holes then satellite speakers never hurt anyone just get stands to suit that way you could rearrange at any time

 

[hizzaah]

This setup just has to last ~3months. After that I'll be able to set them up in my living room during the summer and will be in my apartment next year. So I'm thinking long term with this set up

 

[hizzaah]

Speakers got delivered yesterday.. Sad part is that since its a big *** box, FedEx took it to the off-campus mail place so they could deal with it instead of delivering it to my dorm mail room. Off-campus mail closed before they processed it, and they don't open till Monday I wanted to have the weekend to play with stuff, but I guess I'll have to do it in between classes