Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Building ht room?

I have just puchased a small home but have a full basement. The room dementions if I build the theater room with it this way will be 10' 7" x 26 ft in depth. I will have the prime seating about 14 or 15 ft away from the speakers and screen. I have the Epic 60 500 set up. I have measured it all out and I can barely squeeze all of my speakers and the sub with the tv into that width of space. My question is this. Will having the speakers this close cause any problems? The sub will be right next to the wall on one side and the tower speaker on the other. Will this contribute to a boomy sound or will I be able to get clean response from it in this situation. Also I am planing on putting carpet and drywall up in the room to make it a nice room. In short I am wondering what would be the best way to set this up for the best sound quality. Will I need some sound absorbing materials hanging on my walls? What about a bass trap or anything like that? I know I have all of this stuff STUFFED in a 12 by 11 bedroom right now and holy cow does the bass BOOM!!! Literally shakes the house and window frames. Poor sub can't breathe in here. Anyway I want to hide the wires run them through the walls. In a room with that small a width do I need a rear presence speaker? Will it make the sound envelope that much more emersive? Are these room dementions ok for not producing standing waves? Since it is 2 in the morning I can tell my writing is hard to follow sorry about that guys. I would ultimately like to move the wall about another foot or two, but my furnace sits there and it is a support wall. Does anyone know about how expensive it is to move that stuff or if it can be done?

Jhunt17,

I wouldn't say it will cause you a problem per say, but the further you can space out your speakers, the better the soundstage/imaging will be.

You might want to think about positioning your sub behind your couch and or seating, off to either cornor. It's been my experience you get better results with this setup, although milage varies.

By doing this, that would free up some room which would allow you to space out your speakers a little more.

Just an idea, food for thought if you will.




Sutter

I was going to say the same thing, the sub does not have to be up front, which would save you room for the mains to be spread out to the sides of the screen. The LFE's, especially below 80hz I believe, are non directional so they don't have to be pointing at the listeners. Many place the sub to the sides of a room with great results.

what if I put the sub next to the tv and the 60's next to the wall on each side. I am only going to have around 2 or 3 inches between the speaker, tv, and subwoofer. Will that contribute to the sub sounding boomy? I am by no means an acoustic guru. I do read everything I can find to figure things out. I am really beginging to love watching movies. I saw a post a minute ago about someone saying you start watching all action movies. That is true. I have the ep 500 and love it. I know since it is in a very small room right now that causes it to sound as explosive as it does. It shakes my house. It isn't LOUD, but the sound waves do exactly what I was looking for when I bought this setup. It really puts you in the action. I love it. Anyway back to my problems. Will doing this fix that or will it still be the same since I only have so little space between them? Also if I put it next to the side wall is there a specific direction I need to point the sub. Should I just angle it or does it not matter at all since most frequencies are non directional? Also I have the yamaha 5790 reciever which allows for me to do 7.1 In a room that is as as narrow as the one I am building, will I get much better results in creating an all enclusive sound field if I put two qs8's behind me or is it not worth it, or for that matter just one to make it 6.1. My room again is around 10.6 ft wide x 26 deep x 7 height. Thanks for all the tips guys. Oh and one other thing. Where can I get long runs of RCA cable for my subwoofer. I want to put all of my cables behind the walls so I can make it look clean and the girlfriend won't hate the room cause wires are everywhere. Thanks guys.

In reply to:

---

what if I put the sub next to the tv and the 60's next to the wall on each side.

---

You can certainly do that. I've done it before in past systems, but I've never cared for the results with my sub up front. That's just a preference thing though. If you like it and it works well for you, then go for it. There's nothing wrong with that at all.

However, if you moved your sub and placed it in the rear right or left cornor of your room, or behind your couch or seating area, you'd be able to move your tv over a little more, henceforth allowing you more room up front.

Typically speaking, I like to have my speakers/ sub about 6"-8" from the side wall and at least a good 6"-12" from the back. I'd recommend experimenting a little and see which works best for you and your room.

Last but not least, doing a 7.1 setup in your room. Don't worry about it, it's fine. I've got a dedicated theater room in my house and it's smaller then your room. Mine measures about 16' X 11', with a 7.5" ceiling and I'm running a 7.1 system without any problems whatsoever.



Sutter

JH, those dimensions are very good for minimizing standing wave problems. Square rooms are bad and dimensions which are an exact multiple of each other also aren't good. You shouldn't have any unusual problem with sub boominess, even with the sub right in a corner(no need to worry about which way the sub is pointing). Sometimes if the sub is simply calibrated too loud, this is mistaken for boominess, but it isn't, and turning the sub level down a bit might be the solution.

The problem that you'll have is that the separation of the M60s will be too narrow for best results if you're 14-15' away. Ideally they should also be separated by almost that distance. I suppose that it wouldn't be practical to re-orient the entire setup, but maybe sitting a little closer would give a better effect with an 8' separation.

As far as possibly using back surrounds in a 7.1 setup, that should work well for you. The problem many have is that they're sitting right up against the back wall and they don't have enough open space behind them for a good "back" effect to really develop.

So far as a coaxial cable for the sub, there're plenty of low-cost sources; for example Triangle has some good buys in longer lengths.