Suppose that you have a 10 foot wide 2.40:1 AT screen. I was wondering about if you used 5 in-cabinet M80 behind the screen where it was LW/L/space/C/space/R/RW. Also assume that there is only a couple inches of free space between the screen and the wall, so no speaker could be placed on the front wall outside of the screen. Would this be a good way to do this, or would the wides and mains be too close together? The Wides and L/R would be next to each other, one on each side of a stud.
Here's an interesting layout for 11.1 from the Audyssey.com site:
Using M80s as wide speakers would IMO be a waste of money. M2 speakers work just as well as there is really no significant bass going to the wide speakers. I even swapped out my M22s wides for a pair of M2s and can’t tell the difference.
As for speaker separation I would use this as a starting point.
http://www.audyssey.com/technology/dsx.htmlPlacing your wide speakers close to your mains wouldn't help much if at all. It might also cause interference as the mains and their corresponding wide speakers share a lot of the same audio information in the midrange and up.
Also note that if your main speakers are farther off center than 30 degrees, say closer to 45 degrees then wide speakers don’t help much either. Unless for some reason your surround speakers are way behind your seating.
My screen is 9’8” wide and I have my L/R mains placed to the far left and right so that the front soundstage corresponds to the on screen action perfectly . . . well at least when its well mastered to match the on screen action. The wides mostly fill in the front sides with ambient sounds like crowd, office, machinery and other noises that would fill an area. Occasionally they also enhance hard pans coming from or going offstage in either direction. On well mastered audio tracks there are often voices coming from off stage L/R when a character off screen is talking. However I find this most in video games and anime titles, only a few movies are mastered to where you hear things coming from off to the left or right. Some Star Wars and the LOTR movies come to mind.
