Newbie needs speaker placement help

[kurtkrum]

I am new to this forum but have been reading for about a month to learn as much as I could before going out and just plopping down a ton of money on stuff at the local Bose outlet store.

In the end, I wound up buying from a small "boutique" audio store that helped me piece together a system that I think is better. I ended up with a Yamaha RX-V861 receiver, and 4 Definitive Technologies pro monitor 1000s, a Definitive Technologies procenter 2000, and a Definitive Technologies ProSub 1000.

My questions has to do with placement of the front L & R speakers. The installers that ran the cable and mounted the speakers set them very high at 7 1/2 feet off the floor. There are doors and window beneath them so they could only go a foot lower if needed. My question is this - is 7.5 feet too high for these speakers? Also, they are spaced 10 feet apart. Is that too wide?

I tried looking for other threads on the forum to see if this had been asked before but couldnt really find someone with this same type of question.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Johnd]

Hey kurtkrum. Welcome to the forum.

Here's a link to an audioholics article on speaker placement...it's a good read:

http://www.audioholics.com/tweaks/speaker-setup-guidelines/home-theater-speaker-layout-an-essential-guide

And to answer your question directly, yes, that seems way too high. Generally, the front speaker's tweeters should be placed at ear level to the lp (listening position. Cheers.

 

[kurtkrum]

Thanks so much for the link to the page, it was exactly what I needed!

After resurrecting some high school trigonometry, I calculated the angles for the front L & R speakers and they are fine, but just too high. I can lower the speakers to 6' 10" right above the door/window, but that's the design limit given the layout of the room.

Here's my last two questions:

1. Since the L&R front speakers are higher than recommended, should I put them on brackets and angle them downward toward the LP?

2. Is it worth it to move these speakers down 8"? Will it make that much of a difference.

Thanks for all of your help!

 

[Johnd]

Trial and error is the real litmus test for ideal speaker placement kurtkrum. Use the parameters as rough guidelines and tweak from there. And I would set the speakers relatively horizontal. After you have them roughly placed the fun begins...tweaking to achieve best positioning. Cheers.