Need some tips for a new setup of home theater for great room

[Wardog555]

How about side tables, cabinet. Or speaker stands?

Just remember personal preference and what is best for surround sound do not go together.

Personal preferences = compromised audio and or inaccurate surround sound.
Or what's best for accurate surround sound experience

Choose one not both.

Regards.

 

[russel]

How about side tables, cabinet. Or speaker stands?

Just remember personal preference and what is best for surround sound do not go together.

Personal preferences = compromised audio and or inaccurate surround sound.
Or what's best for accurate surround sound experience

Choose one not both.

Regards.

Yes, I get it, as my original post stated; I'm not looking for perfect surround sound. I'm looking for the best compromise.

Talking about that, as for placement of ceiling speakers, where should they be? Attached is my guess as to where they should be placed, but would like some input before I cut holes in the ceiling.

As for the angled ceiling speaker, should the rear surround point towards the listener, or towards the front of the room?

 

[shadyJ]

Yes, I get it, as my original post stated; I'm not looking for perfect surround sound. I'm looking for the best compromise.

Talking about that, as for placement of ceiling speakers, where should they be? Attached is my guess as to where they should be placed, but would like some input before I cut holes in the ceiling.

As for the angled ceiling speaker, should the rear surround point towards the listener, or towards the front of the room?

Your diagram looks like reasonable placements for the speakers. Keep in mind it is a compromise, so I wouldn't have the volume level of the surrounds be anywhere near as loud as the front stage. I would only use them for a bit more immersion and not try to recreate the surround sound stage of a dedicated theater room. Let the fronts do most of the heavy lifting in that system, and just have the surrounds add a light touch to the overall sound.

 

[russel]

Cool. Thanks for all your help. I really appreciate all of it! Can’t wait to get it setup.

 

[Wardog555]

Just wanted to say you may want those rear surrounds back behind further.

 

[russel]

Do you think this would be better?

 

[-Jim-]

One thing you might try that could make things simpler for you and potentially sound better is just go with a really good full-range front left and right, and skip the sub and center speakers.

@shadyJ Sorry to be late on this. Your comment above reminded me of a comment I heard. I was on a SVS Podcast a couple weeks back, and they had a guest who was a sound engineer of some repute who mixed quite a few Albums that had significant sales, and did other mixing work like commercials, advertising, etc. When discussing multichannel music he commented that going to a "phantom" center channel in a Dolby setup causes deliberate drop in Dynamic Range. I had never heard this before. Is this true?

 

[shadyJ]

@shadyJ Sorry to be late on this. Your comment above reminded me of a comment I heard. I was on a SVS Podcast a couple weeks back, and they had a guest who was a sound engineer of some repute who mixed quite a few Albums that had significant sales, and did other mixing work like commercials, advertising, etc. When discussing multichannel music he commented that going to a "phantom" center channel in a Dolby setup causes deliberate drop in Dynamic Range. I had never heard this before. Is this true?

I'm not exactly sure what he means. From a sound engineer's perspective, dynamic range would be how much amplitude headroom there is in the signal. That would depend on the bitdepth of the format you are mixing in. Modern sound engineers usually mix in 24-bit PCM, and that is more dynamic range than human hearing will allow, in fact, that is more dynamic range than any electronics can produce in the digital-to-analog conversion. Dolby Atmos as well as Dolby TrueHD can support 24-bit audio, so the file encoding should be lossless from the mixing stage.

From the reproduction side, it might mean that there is less dynamic range because there is just one less speaker to produce sound, but two decent speakers with proper amplification will give you all the dynamic range that you could ever want.

 

[-Jim-]

@shadyJ Thanks for the response. The guest mentioned this was a relatively unknown effect inherent in the Dolby processing that was well known in his trade. Even though I've never really bothered with a phantom center much personally (other than to try it once in a blue moon), I don't want to advise others who have a need to go in that direction without first cautioning them if this is indeed a fact.