Speaker adjustment for unbalanced room

M

MIKED33

Audioholic Intern
My TV is off to the left of the center of the room and slightly angled out, as there is a window in the middle of the wall, and there was no way my wife would let me block a window with a 50" tv, she was right in hindsight :).

The TV is surrounded by shelving and on the other side of the window is another built-in bookshelf. My dilemma is where to place the front speaker for surround sound.

Should i just bunch the Fronts and the center just above the tv, where there wouldn't be much distance between each. or should i Put the center just above, the left to the far left, and the right all the way on the other bookshelf on the other side of the window...make sense? in the end, the left would be about 1 foot away from the center and the right would be about 6 feet away from the center.

{left front}-------{center}---------[window][window][window]-----------{right front}
[-----------TV-----------------]

If i do it that way, is there some special set-up i have to do with speaker volumes or delay times through my receiver? i have an onkyo SR504 and i see in the manual the option to do both, but i'm not sure what is neccesary. i'm just wondering if the right speaker is going to sound likes it way out in right field and out of whack with the overall sound. i see you can set the speaker distances, but that just seems to be for the distance to the listening area, not the distance between the speakers themselves. some salesman told me i should buy a denon receiver, which could automatically calibrate the sound with a mic?

i'll only be using this for movies and tv.

has anyone else had this dilemma?
any suggestions are appreciated...
 
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M

MDS

Audioholic Spartan
Setting the speaker distances in the setup menu will take care of getting the sound from each of the front speakers to reach your ears at the same time, but what will suffer to some degree is the stereo image.

If the center is placed right above the TV that will help a lot to anchor the sound to the screen so it appears that the sound is coming directly from the TV. If you use a matrix surround mode like PLII Music to play music in 5.1 it probably won't sound so bad at all.
 

dp_pb

Enthusiast
I would guess that having both left and right speaker equally spaced apart (but not very far apart) will sound better. It could end up irritating that the image is skewed in the alternative arrangement.

Best thing though would be to try both out with whatever material you tend to listen / watch and see which you prefer.

cheers,

dp
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
My left wall is almost entirely glass/sliding door. I use a corner setup that covers part of the glass, but doesn't block light really. It also helps to move your first reflections outward, which can really help with the stereo image.

 
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