I'm still contemplating an acoustically transparent screen for my multipurpose den area. My only concern at the moment is the L and R placement. If there is approximately 7 feet of distance between the middle of the tweeters (not the edge of the speaker), a 100" screen, and at most 11.5' of viewing distance am I beyond "spec." Is there a calculator I can use to figure this out? Maybe I'm not mathematically tuned to calculate the THX and Dolby degree recommendations, :-).

I think you will be good. Mine are about 8 feet apart and I sit 12 feet away.

My distances are similar to Rick's, I think you'll be ok, too.

Distance between the speaker casing or the actual speaker?

What size screen are you using? Is it a AT screen?

I apologize, I just checked mine, they are closer to 6 ft, tweeter to tweeter and I have a slight toe-in on them as well. I'd like them spread out a little but they'll block entrance ways on both sides

Thinking "out of the box" if I had to I could switch the placement of the audio cabinet and subwoofer which would put the left and right at around 10-10.5 feet distance between. The negative being the close proximity to the side walls.

Here is the room btw:

Yea but ... you *really* don't need either entrance anyway, do you Adrian?

True!! I can always use the window.

Wouldn't that bring back old times?

Do tell Rick.....

I'm not sure how the size of the display would matter. I have a 50" plasma with M80s flanking the right and left.

OP - your angle is 17 degrees. It should be between 22 and 30... but sometime you just have to keep the house!

What is the formula for calculating the degrees? What am I looking at if the speakers are 10-11 feet apart with 11 feet seating distance?

Josh, the most common suggestion is probably that the front speakers(i.e., the drivers, not the enclosure)should be separated about as much as your sitting distance from them, and this is how my M22s are set up. However, others are of the view that if the seats are as much as 1 1/2 times the separation distance away, this is still fine.

I'd suggest that you use the wider spread that you proposed, even if they're then close to the side walls. Being quite close to one of the room surfaces(floor or wall)isn't necessarily harmful if the distances to the other two surfaces differ. The distance from the center of the woofer cones to the floor and two walls should all be different so that the room boundary effects don't tend to pile up at the same frequencies, increasing the peaks and dips in the upper bass/lower mid-range.

I also sit 11 feet from screen.

I calculate my ideal speaker width (22 degrees to 30 degrees) to be 8.88 feet to 12.70 feet.

Interesting, the M60's that just came today have instructions that state "seperate left and right speakers by roughly half the listening distance."

So in our case, axiom's saying seperate speakers by 5.5 feet. Interestingly, that's only 14 degrees...

weird - this is not supposed to be a speaker manufacturer preference, it's based on the well established standards that recording engineers use when they mix our music and movies

So I don't understand why Axiom's published info would be so different that the 22-30 degree standard.

Axiomoholic,

I wrote that in part because if you separate the main speakers by the same amount as your viewing distance, you sometimes get a "hole-in-the-middle" effect and not a continuous soundstage if you are listening in stereo. Playback in a domestic home is NOT a recording studio control room. After all, you are trying to achieve a plausible illusion of a musical event in a rather confined space. So adjust your speaker locations and listening habits to help you achieve that.

These "rules" are not cast in stone. It is so dependent on the room and the arrangement of furniture, etc. With a video display you also don't want the main left and right speakers to be too far outboard of the screen, or there is mismatch of audio scale to the video presentation.

I usually advise customers to start out with a separation of 6 to 8 feet between the main fronts, unless they are in an unusually large room with a very large screen and viewing distance.

Regards,
Alan

Great response Alan, I was hoping you'd chime in with clarification.