Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Sub woofer & possible L/R surround placement

This are my current systems.

What would be the best sub (red dot) placement, current place or swap with the left tower or move to the right hand side of the recliner?

Also, if I would upgrade my Orb surround to QS8, would it be advise to place the Left surround to the same place as the ORB (which angle to the listening area)? If so the QS8 would be facing the TV area.

Or shall I just place the QS8 a bit further than current Orb (facing the door entrance) but not parallel with the Right surround?

Would you all think the current SVS PC12+ will be under power for my room?

Actual room size 15'x 20'x 11' with opening to dinning & kitchen as seen in the drawing.

Thanks.


Michael

Michael, the position I'd suggest for the sub would be directly in the right front corner where a rack is shown now. Generally the strongest and smoothest(except in a square room)location for a single sub is the corner farthest from a large opening. I'd think that the PC12+ would be adequate for that size room.

Since you'll be using both side and back surrounds, the side surrounds should be placed if possible directly to the side of(not back of)the listening position, pointing straight across the room.

Thanks for the suggestion.
However I cannot place the side surround right beside the listening area as the opening to the dining do not have any wall for me to wall mount the speakers.
Will try out the new place for the sub if there would be any improvement.

You could opt to hang the side surrounds from the ceiling for better placement in a 7.1 system. It definitely would work better but if you already have things wired, I wouldn't start over.

Sub placement is different for every room, so it is not easy for us to tell you where to place it, you need to experiment. As John mentioned, often the corner opposite the opening into the overall room is a great place to start. I would start near that corner, and maybe move the sub a few feet along each wall to find the best position. Keep in mind, you will have to recalibrate your sub and speakers to the same dB's using the built in setup on the receiver, or with an SPL meter.

For 7.1, the side surrounds normally should be to the side of you, or slightly in front. What is behind the recliner on the left wall? Is that open, or is there a wall by the stairs going upstairs? Can you put the left surround to the left of that recliner, and move the right surround forward more? The Qs8's can be ceiling mounted as well if that helps...

The wall behind the recliner is half open with stairs going up to upstairs.

To move the surround placement, the wiring have to be re-do as all wires goes inside the plaster ceiling now, which could be hassle.

Ceiling mount the QS8? hmmm, never thought of that.

Will try different sub placement once I get the longer sub cable in.

Still considering to get a cheap monoprice cable or use my Axiom dollar to get a free Axiom sub cable.... :p

The Axiom Q's are very forgiving, so you may find they work great in place of the current location. Once you setup the receiver distances and dB levels, you may find they work great.

That room looks to be very similarly in shape to my basement HT in my old house. The deep pocket you have behind the couch is ideal for creating a great surround environment. In my old HT room the side surrounds were directly on either side of the seating area as others on here have suggested. Then my first pair of back surrounds (I had the 9.1 set-up that Denon allows for) were half way between the seating area and the back wall, and the second set of back surrounds were on the back wall in about the same position as yours are. This made for truely remarkable effects, even with the inferior Cambridge Soundworks surrounds I was using in that set-up.

Since my seating position in my current HT is only 4 feet from the back wall I have my surrounds (only in 5.1 configuration at this time, will be upgrading to 9.1 again eventually) on spread out along the back wall. Once I get my next two QS8's I will place them on either side of my seating position, plugging them into the side surround outs and turn the one's on my back wall into the rear channels. Now, the tricky part for me comes when deciding what to do with the last pair of QS8's I'll get to turn it into a 9.1 system... since there isn't much room behind my seating area to really be able to place 6 surrounds around without looking, and probably sounding very crowded, I have been toying with the idea of placing the second set of back surrounds towards the front of the room instead. I got this idea also from reading up on the Dolby story where they talked about placing rear surrounds up high in the front of the room. Something about how the brain works makes you think it's coming from behind you or something. Doesn't sound like the IDEAL location or anything, but in my case it might be the only place that would be practical.

Who knows, with the side surround information coming at me from directly beside me, and the rear surround information being split between directly behind me and three quarters of the way towards the front of the room, it might just work out nicely!

Micah, I'd like a cite to that "Dolby story" since I've never heard of that before. The only psycho-acoustic effect that's remotely similar is that a single centered back speaker can sometimes create a "reversal" where a sound intended to be imaged directly behind instead appears to come from the front.

I'm in agreement on that one John.

Hmmm... well I saw it here on this website. Remember that article on Dolby Labratories not too long ago? It was in there somewhere. I think it was when they were talking about Pro Logic II. At any rate they were talking about placing speakers above the front mains and sending the rear surround information to them and it having the same effect of having them behind you, with the Pro Logic II running things anyway. I would have to reread it to remember exactly how they discribed it. Can anyone find that link again?

Found it...

http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/07/08/engadget-goes-behind-the-dolby-logo/


Click the link, and scroll down to the 'Dolby Pro Logic IIz' section and read through it.

Actually after rereading through that I guess it seems Pro Logic IIz takes 'front height' cues and sends them to those front speakers, not the rear information... wonder how the computer knows what is coming from the 'top of the front' channels? Weird, wild stuff!

Down at the bottom of that article is where the room with 24 speakers write-up is. It's called 'the sandbox'. And after rereading that I guess there was only 1 speaker on the ceiling, not 4 or 6. There are 6 speakers placed above ear level, I got those mixed up.

My memory isn't that great as it seems!

Micah, that article doesn't appear to say anything close to what you described. It simply discusses the view that front height channels may provide a better overall listening experience than back surrounds.

Edit: now seeing your follow-up post after you re-read, yes, the front height channels aren't carrying back surround information.

Hey Micah, you seem to be willing to go to extraordinary measures to get your surround sound dialed in so I have a suggestion based on my experience in my apartment. If you can, set up total blackout in your room. I’m not talking about dark I’m talking black (i. e. no light sources other than the screen and no (minimize) reflective surfaces.

My apartment had all light sources blocked out and black curtains 360 degrees around the room. Not only did this make the screen appear to hang in open space it also had an unexpected effect on the sound. It deadened the room a little, but not much. The interesting thing is that it took the echo out of the room effectively removing the walls from giving distance queues.

For example with the curtains open (walls exposed) the scene in were the bucket falls down the well in Balin’s Tomb it sound great but somehow confined. With the curtains closed the sound is more cavernous.

At the beginning of “Appleseed” were shattered glass and concrete are flying all around it sounded nice and enveloping with the curtains open. However, with the curtains closed I got not only the envelopment but more depth. I could here discrete pieces of glass/concrete/shell casings hitting from right next to me all the way out into the distance. Much better effect than Audyssey.

It’s actually quite disorienting. Even with the room blacked out but curtains open I could “hear” my position in the room relative to the walls just by the noised made by moving. With the curtains closed the audio queues that would normally indicate my distance to a wall weren’t there. If nothing was making noise it was like being in an endless void.

One drawback I found with total blackout was that the darker I got the room the more annoying even the smallest amount of light became. Got to the point during some movies/games I pulled a black sheet over my legs because they were just to distracting. I’m looking to buy something along the lines of a black ninja suit for the house.

The other thing I found was that having the curtains closed took the airiness out of some music but that was easily remedied by opening some or all of the curtains.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I found total blackout enhanced both the video and surprisingly to me the audio more than anything since upgrading from TV + boom box (first surround system) to Axioms, allowing near total suspension of disbelief. It was way better than moving from 5.1 to 7.1.

Cheers,
Dean

Wow, that sounds pretty wild alright. Also a bit psychedelic I must say! Lol, but an interesting find. I suppose movie theaters are dark with sound treatments for precisely the same reason. Here in our town we had a Kerasotes 'Cinema 6' for years and years. Then a competitor built a Danbury 'Cinema 10' right down the street from it. Soon after Kerasotes expanded and added 5 additional theaters to round up to a 'Cinema 11'. Three of the 5 new cinema's were your average theaters. But they built 2 supreme theaters that they open the big movies in every week. Then the next week comes along and those movies get shuffled to the ordinary screens and the biggest two new movies get put on their main two screens. They really did a bang up job on the two main screens. They are a bit bigger, but besides that they have a top of the line surround system in there, the sound proofing is top notch, and the sound treatments are of the highest calliber. Watching a movie in one of those two theaters is enough to make you want to go see a movie on opening weekend so that you don't get shuffled back to one of the regular screens.

And yes it's like you discribed, as soon as the movie starts in one of their main rooms it's a completely different feeling from the rest. The sound field is infinitely deeper than the room itself. In other words it doesn't seem to have walls, or a ceiling or anything of that nature. You don't feel confined in a cement bunker, you feel as if you're right in the middle of the action. If it's the desert scene from 'The English Patient', you feel like you're right there in the airplane flying over the desert with Ralph Fines. If it's 'Titanic', you feel like you're in the middle of the ocean with Leanardo DiCaprio. Sure I know a theater has 20 times as much space as my HT, and probably close to that many speakers as well. But these two theaters are still a different breed from regular theaters. Not quite on par with say an IMAX theater, but still leaps and bounds better than your average cinema.

We have blinds over our windows now, and curtains covering our french doors. But the curtains are not heavy, they are transparent. Perhaps some heavy draperies are in order. I can't get too crazy unfortunately, as this room doubles as our sales room, so it has to be a bit more on the 'inviting' side and not give the feeling we're vampires! Lol, but I do love my sound effects, so perhaps some experimentation is in order eh?