Layout suggestions?

[dis]

I live in a 2 bedroom appartment and recently I've changed the orientation of the furniture to better access from the living room area to the kitchen and rest of the appartment.

While on one hand I have improved the traffic congestion I've sacrificed the rather ideal speaker placement I once had. I've included before and after pictures of the room layout and speaker placement.

With my current setup I'm having a hard time finding a way to hookup the rear channels, they are direct radiating speakers using wall mount brackets. I could mount one one the North wall and have it radiate downwards to the South and mount the other on the East wall between the window&balcony and have it radiation to the West but I don't think that will sound good.

Alternatively I could put the rears on stands and have them sitting on the floor on either side of the air-conditioning unit.

A third possibility would be to replace the rears with bi-pole surrounds and mount them on the North and East walls like above.

What do you guys think?

 

[saurabh]

Very true, you have placed yourself in a not-so-good setup but two alternatives have to be tried, buy wall mounts for the surrounds (so that you can rotate and angle them) and fix the wall mounts as depicted by the Red or Blue on the back wall. Leave a distance of 20% of total height from the roof and fix the wall mounts at that point on the wall.

a) Turn the speakers so that they both face each other, shown by red arrows and tow them slightly towards the roof, this helps in creating a balanced soundstage. Listen to them for a week or so.

b) Direct the speakers towards the TV, straight, as depicted by the blue arrow, listen to them for a week.

Decide between the two.

The problem is that the fronts will directly hit the window, glass is a very good deflecter and will give you boomy sound.

Another problem is that there is no distance between your seating and back wall (I am assuming you will sit under the Aircon). There should be atleast 2ft or more distance for a better soundstage and to evade that boomy sound.

Best of luck, let us know the results.

 

[dis]

The backside of the couch is flush against the airconditioner and the window is convered by a window drape.

The wallmounts I currently own allow for a +/- 30 degree rotation I was originally thinking of mounting them as indicated by the blue arrows but I was under the impression that this is not the correct or true setup according to the Dolby 5.1 layout diagram. As far as the boomy sound I find that it's not the rear wall that's at fault (my guess is cause of the window drape) but more so due to the fact that the front speakers are placed too close to the back wall. I've tried the 1/3 and 1/5 rules for determining the spacing behind the speakers the smallest distance being 2.2 ft (1/5*11ft=2.2 cause of that damn a/c). I find 2.2 feet is far too much distance to spare in such a tight space.

Is there a minimum distance that should seperate the front speakers and the listener?

 

[saurabh]

The rotation required is 90 deg to the side so that both speakers parallelly face each other, if it is not possible to replace the existing wall mounts go for the alternative setup. There is no hard and fast rule for the distance for your fronts from backwall. Just be sure to keep them either inline with the center or slightly ahead of the center, slightly towed in. Adjust your surround delays according to the distance of the fronts from the listening point, again no hard and fast rule for this.

Let your ears be the best judge.