Rear surround placement?

[rack04]

Man, apartment life is really screwing up my plans for a good home theater setup. How bad will it hurt the sound if I were to place my bookshelf speakers under end tables straddlling the couch? I am trying to make it as aesthetically pleasing as possible to keep the wife happy. Maybe what I should do is invest in a pair of satellite speakers with wall mounts or speaker stands. Any recommendation?

 

[Unregistered]

The surrounds really need to be at ear level or slightly above. You could put them ON the end tables, but I wouldn't put them under the table. Wall mounts would be better yet. Many small book shelf speakers come with swivel-mounts for wall mounting (JBL for sure) and others have a keyhole slot for hanging directly on a screw you put in the wall.

 

[rack04]

For fear for ruining the walls and bad wire management I would be more inclined to use speaker stands. Are speaker stand more adaptive to smaller satellite surround sound speakers? What are some good speaker stands that don't cost an arm and a leg.

 

[JoeE SP9]

Sanus makes some fairly nice stands that are not ridiculously priced. Check www.partsexpress.com for price and sizes.

 

[rack04]

So let me get this straight:

1.) Rear speakers need to be placed so that the tweeter is just above the listeners ear level.
2.) Rear speakers need to be skewed inward towards the listener.

Is this correct?

 

[JohnA]

Try this

The point of Surround sound speakers is to provide "background" sounds...these "shouldn't" be pointed directly at the listener (in fear of being able to pin-point the sound), they should be above the ear level and slightly behind the listening position. I have problems with my set up as well, I live in an apt. also that is not the best for Home Theater. I don't even have room for speaker stands, so I'm going to mount the speakers to the wall at ceiling hight and aim them "toward" the seating area but not directly at it. As far as stands go check this out:

http://www.partsexpress.com/webpage.cfm?&DID=7&WebPage_ID=227

and they have a buyout set:

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/pshowdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=240-770

I hope this has helped!