Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Help with surround speakers placement

Hi,

I am in the middle of a remodel right now and I'm creating a great room that has the kitchen adjacent to it.

I have a wall to mount my QS8 left surround, but I do not have a wall on the other side to mount a right surround. I thought about putting the right surround QS8 on a floor stand, which is doable but I can see it becoming an obstruction when people are walking by.



I can mount both speakers to the back wall, but the back wall is about 10" from the sofa. From some reading, mounting surround that far back isn't ideal.



I can mount the QS8's on the ceiling, but I'm not sure how that would effect the surround sound aspect of things.



Thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.



Jon

Your middle choice of the back wall should work just fine. Room correction such as Audyssey will compensate nicely for any anomalies & the QS8s are certainly powerful enough to get ample sound to your listening area.

My QS8 mountings are far more problematic than that. Mine are about 8' back & are off center behind my MLP due to the shape of my room. With Audyessy's corrections, they work well, although probably not ideal...

TAM

I'll just comment on one aspect from my experience vs. make a choice for you.

In the TV room in my basement, prior to my HT room, I was forced to mount the QS8 sides high at almost ceiling level due to the room configuration. The design of the QS8s diffuses the direct speaker location effect more than many speakers but there were some times that the height of the sound effects was a bit distracting. Seemed to be on the sharper effects. A door knock that seemed unusually high, that sort of thing. 98% or more of the time, it was fine.

Surround effects in 5.1 are technically, side effects so behind is not perfect either but again, the large majority of the time, you may never notice that.

In short, I wouldn't worry about making it perfect, as often a room prevents perfect and so the best you can go for is a solid 98% and enjoy. The main thing being... enjoy!

Do you have room in the plan for something on the floor between great room and kitchen (small freestanding divider, large potted plant, cardboard cut-out of the Terminator etc..) that would let you hang a QS8 down from the ceiling above it without creating a head-banging obstacle ?

Thanks for the replies everyone.

bridgman: The plan is to keep the floorplan open, so we won't be putting anything between the great room and kitchen.

Look like I'll be following exlabdriver's suggestion and just going with the rear mounting. I plan on picking up a new Yamaha receiver anyways so I'll just let the YPAO calibrate things.

It's been a long while since I've looked at the Axiom website and those inwall M22's look SOOOOO tempting!! I wonder what the trade up value of my cabinet m22's are worth!

Jon, welcome to Axiom. If you're going to mount the side surrounds on the back wall, keep them as widely separated as possible so as to maximize the amount of "side" effect available from the back.

It isn't entirely clear from the diagram, but if you can use a third M22 in the center, that would be closer to the ideal arrangement.

Have you considered placing the TV on the opposite wall? The QS8's would both mount to the wall, would be a little closer to the seat and damn near the perfect location for a 5.1 layout.

Hi Everyone,

Thanks again for all the replies.

JohnK: The additional m22 - I'm assuming you're saying it should go in the rear center? Unfortunately I don't have it in my budget to purchase another m22. I got these speakers in 2008 and the remodel is going to tap me out once I get a new receiver. But I'll definately try and keep the QS8's as far apart as possible. Thank you for the suggestion.

brwsaw: Unfortunately we can't do that. If we reversed things as you suggested, then people walking in and out of the door in the top left of the room would be walking in the line of sight of everyone watching tv.

detour?

Cool room. Congrats!

I side with brwsaw. If it can be done, a flip would be almost ideal. In any case, a purpose built room with layout in mind will net fantastic results in most cases. You are on the right track with JohnK's suggestion.