1) Do not buy Bose
2) Do not buy Bose (just like Fight Club, the first rule is so important, it needs to be said twice)
3) Don't be like Fight Club and break the first 2 rules anyway.
4) Seriously...do not buy Bose.
5) I sincerely hope your room is not exactly 14' x 14' . If it is, no speakers on Earth are going to sound good in there. A perfectly square room means BIG TIME standing waves.
6) The room has more to do with what you will hear than ANY EQUIPMENT.
Before you start thinking about anything in the way of speakers, receivers, whatever...PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR ROOM.
7) You've got a decent budget - use some of it to acoustically treat your room!
a) BASS TRAPS!
Even if your room is not a perfect square (and let's hope that it isn't), I'm going to assume that it's close to being square. As such, standing waves are going to be a problem - no way around it. Bass traps will help. They can't solve the issue entirely, but they can help.
I suggest you treat all four corners of your room with bass traps.
b) Due to the relatively small size of your room, I'm going to highly recommend
Auralex Acoustics for your room treatment needs.
c) Thankfully, for your room size and budget, it's super easy! Just get one of the
Auralex Alpha-DST Kits for ~$400 and you get everything you need to treat your room all in one handy package!
Neeto
d) If you hate the looks of the Alpha-DST Kit products, you can substitute other acoustic treatment products, but for your budget and room size, the Alpha-DST Kit is exactly right, so use that as a good guide in terms of what you need and then just chose products that more closely suit your desires in terms of looks.
You can see the full suit of
Auralex Products for ideas
e) When it comes to placing the acoustic treatment products, here's what you do. Put a Bass Trap in each corner. Treat the front of your room, the side walls and the ceiling with the small, thin panels.
IF YOU ARE SITTING WITH YOUR HEAD CLOSE TO THE BACK WALL, BE SURE TO TREAT THE WALL DIRECTLY BEHIND YOUR HEAD AS WELL.
If, however, you have at least 6 feet from the back of you head to the wall behind you, you don't have to treat the back wall.
The idea for a movie theater setup is that sound coming from the front three speakers needs to be very clear, precise and pin-point accurate, while the surround speakers are supposed to be diffuse and difficult to localize in order to provide ambience and a "wrap-around" effect.
Sounds coming from the front are supposed to "wash over you" and then "disappear" into the back of the room. That is way it is very important to treat the wall behind you if you are sitting closer than 6 feet from it.
The other very important areas to treat with the panels are the side reflection points - most importantly, the "first reflection" points (hey...that's my name! What a koinky-dink!
)
The "first reflection" points are where the sound would bounce off the side walls directly to your ears. Imagine a billiard ball being shot from the speaker, bouncing off the side wall and coming to your ears. Where ever the billiard ball would hit the side wall for that to happen? That's the reflection point and you want to put some panels there.
Same goes for the reflection points on the ceiling.
You also want to treat the front wall of the room. Why? Because you do not want sound to get reflected from the surround speakers, off the front wall and then to your ears. Remember, everything coming from the front of the room is supposed to sound clear, distinct and pin-point accurate. You can't get that if there's sounds bouncing off of the front wall, can you?
The back portion of the room should be left largely untreated though. You DO want sound bouncing around the back of the room because this is where the surround speakers play and they are supposed to sound ambient and less pin-point accurate.
Once again, directly behind your head is a good place to treat because you don't want the sound from the front speakers bouncing directly off of the back wall and to your ears from behind you! But most of the back of the room should be left "live" without panels so that the surround speakers can bounce their sound around back there.
8) NOW - with your room nicely treated - in a room that is only some 14 feet long, you probably aren't going to want a 7.1 speaker setup. A 5.1 speaker setup is actually more likely to sound better in a short room like that.
The 6th and 7th "surround back" speakers only came into being because in a large theater - where you've got a very long distance from the back of your head to the wall behind you - the reflected sound off of the back wall from the surround speakers gets totally lost and instead of hearing a "wrap-around" effect, you only get sounds from the front and sides. The 6th and 7th "surround back" speakers "fill in" that gap.
But in a small theater, where your head is quite close to the back wall, you get plenty of reflected sound from the standard surround speakers and there's no need for "surround back" speakers in order to create the "wrap-around" effect.
Furthermore, in a small theater, having those 6th and 7th "surround back" speakers puts them ridiculously close to your head! You wind up hearing them so clearly and so distinctly that it mucks up the front soundstage! This is bad, bad, bad. Not Bose bad. But bad.
End result? In a small room, like yours, 5.1 is actually the better way to go! You still completely get the "wrap-around" effect - there's no worries of that. And you keep the back of the room ambient while the front of the room remains pin-point accurate and clear. The surround channels do not over-power the front and you don't lose the ambient nature of the surround channels due to having a 6th and 7th "surround back" speaker playing straight into the back of your head!
9) Trust me. I've rambled on with a TON of text already. And I know what I'm talking about. But I know you're thinking, "but...I really wanted 7.1..."
Nope. Nopey nope nope. 5.1 is better in your room. Trust me.
But since you probably won't and will probably still want 7.1 anyway, let me just say that is you MUST put 7 speakers in your room, even though 5 speakers will actually sound better, then use diffuse speakers in those 6th and 7th "surround back" positions. Do not use direct-radiating surround back speakers that will just be firing straight into the back of your head!
5 speakers is still the best way to go here. But if you just MUST put 7 in your 14' long room - because your tummy will ache if you don't - then put diffuse speakers (like di-poles) back there.
It'll all sound super mushy and less clear than if you just used 5 speakers, but hey..."mushy" is better than, "what did that guy just say? I couldn't hear because my rad 6th and 7th speakers were firing directly into the back of my head!"
10) Get the
SVSound SBS-01 $999 5.1 speaker package that other people have already mentioned. For this price point, there is nothing better IMO. You might be able to eek out ever so slightly better speakers, but then you'd majorily sacrifice on the sub. Or you could eek out a tiny bit better of a sub, but then have to get lesser speakers. This package is the sweetness for $1000. Buy it.
11) STOP! You don't need a 6th and 7th speaker! Trust Me!
12) $50 now gets spent of the single most crucial piece of equipment in this whole entire setup - the
Auralex GRAMMA
I am not exaggerating or kidding around when I say this. The GRAMMA makes such a huge difference to your bass response that it is, without question, something that you MUST have resting underneath your subwoofer.
What the GRAMMA does is decouple the subwoofer from the floor. Normally, with the subwoofer sitting directly on the floor, more vibration than you would imagine gets sent into the floor. As a result, the floor itself shakes, which, in turn, shakes the walls, which shake the structure of your house, which results in the whole house being able to hear your subwoofer rumbling away and a bunch of people screaming at you to "turn down that noise!"
Not fun.
Worse than that, with all of those surfaces of your house shaking in sympathy with your sub, you get major distortion in the form of resonance and structure-borne transmission of the subwoofer's sound eminating all throughout the entire house!
The GRAMMA puts a stop to all that. It decouples the subwoofer from the floor so that the floor no longer shakes in sympathy with the subwoofer. You get tighter, cleaner, far more accurate bass and everyone else gets a WAY quieter house! Win, win, win and for $50, it's a no-brainer!
So...that leaves us rather little for a receiver. Thankfully, you don't have to spend a ton for a very nice receiver these days!
For this price point, nothing's going to beat the
Onkyo TX-SR606 . And at $350, it fits perfectly - like a glove! - into this
unbelievably better-than-Bose $1800 system!
13) In summary:
- Auralex Alpha-DST Kit ............ $400
- Auralex GRAMMA ................... $50
- SVSound SBS-01 package ...... $1000
- Onkyo TX-SR606 ....................$350
Total = $1800
- Not making the worst mistake of your A/V life by buying Bose? ..... Priceless
14) If you still buy Bose, I will never ever be your friend again. I'm serious. No take-sies back-sies
Good luck!
