Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Surround Placement - Am I Missing Much?

Due to the constraints of my listening area, my surrounds are not placed idealy. Ideally, they should be placed on the side walls beside the listening position directly across from one another. I have mine placed on the side walls, roughly 6'high, but not exactly across from one another. Judging by sight, I would say the back edge of the left surround is directly across from the leading edge of the right surround. This was as close as I could get them to being directly across from each other as the left wall ends prematurely and opens up into the front entry way.

I have two seating positions in the room...the couch and the computer desk at the back of the room. The back edge of the couch is roughly a foot in front of the left surround so sitting there I am not directly beside either surround. At the computer chair, I am behind both surrounds...maybe 2' behind the right surround. The surruonds are bipolar (Wharfedale Evo DFS) so maybe that makes tolerances less crucial. The system sounds just fine to me; but I can't help but wonder what I am missing if things were 'ideal'.

I have thought of buying some stands to mount the surrounds and then I would be able to place them directly across from one another at either sitting position. I also have pondered placing them on the back wall.

I can always experiment with rear wall placement or with speaker stands; but I don't want to spend any money to buy speaker stands or new lengths of surround wire (which I would have to do to mount them on the back wall) without first getting some opinions. Thanks.

Mike, I'd think that it's highly unlikely that the slightly uneven lineup of your surrounds is a significant factor. In a 5.1 setup without back surrounds it's often a good idea to have the side surrounds slightly farther back than the listening position, so as to give a little more "back" effect. Especially when you're at the desk, a positioning of the surrounds on the back wall, but widely separated almost to the side walls, might give you a bit better overall surround effect.

I've had my surrounds propped up in a temporary position for a long time. They were along the side walls, just slightly behind the listening position but only about a foot above ear level. I've been longing to get them up on the walls and finally did so yesterday.

Due to circumstances, I had to put them in what I considered less than optimal position, farther back (about 4 feet behind the listening postion), and higher (about 6 1/2 feet above the floor) than I wanted. I'm surprised to say that I prefer them much more in the new position. Having them that far behind, as John suggests, increases the rear surround effect, without losing the side surround effect. I LIKE it!

The surrounds are very forgiving.

My setup is far for optimum due to WAF of speaker placement. One surround is 5 feet away. The other 20 feet away. I still get a great surround effect for the Qs8's.

For now, until the new HT room is done, I have my left surround sitting on a small crate about 8" off of the floor, 10ft from the primary listening position. The right surround is 3ft off the floor, sitting on a shelf of an end table, next to the couch, about 5 ft. from the listening position. The rears aren't even hooked up right now. Sounds awesome right now, as long as the levels and delay settings are correct. Can't wait for the true basement HT experience.. Off to paint now...