I am going to be rebuilding my Home Theater in my home this weekend and need some advice on the QS8 Placement.
I have a 5.1 setup and am unsure about where to put the QS8s. My couch will be very close to the rear wall. I can not run the cable through the wall so the speakers will need to be suspended from the ceiling. That being said, do I want the speakers directly behind the seating area, or to the sides?
Remember, if they are to the sides, then they will be close to the corners. If they are directly behind, they will be almost directly above the seating area, and 10 feet up.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Whether you have 5.1 or 7.1, the left/right surrounds should be to the left/right of the listening position either slightly in front/behind a parrallel line to your ears.
You need some seperation of the left/right channel and it does not sound like you will get this from behind you and above, as your ears will be aimed to the right/left.
I would think the sides, even if they are close to the rear corners will work fine. The rear tweeter would bounce off the rear wall and give you a simulated 7.1 experience in a way.
I just don't think 10ft up, behind you would give you the same experience.
Having them on the sides, even if close to the corner, should work just fine.
I suggest you try behind and beside and see which works best for your room.
If you have the option to position the left/right channels as intended, it does not make sense to put them behind you.
There is a reason they call them left/right surrounds, not rear surrounds. In 7.1, that is a different story.
It is one thing to have them spread out behind you on the back wall, but directly behind you and above most likely will not give you the experience as intended by the recording engineers.
Of course THX, Dolby, and DTS could be wrong.
Hey Randy,
I would agree with you if they were direct-radiating or if his couch wasn't so far back but with multi-polar types such as the QS8s I am not really sure in this case. A lot depends on room acoustics. It doesn't hurt to try both positions to see what sounds best. I know it's a pain but you'll never really know unless you experiment. And now that I think of it, you may even want to pitch them down towards your listening position since they will be so high up. Let us know what you find out.
True, in a 5.1 setup the surrounds are side surrounds and should be placed more to the side than to the back. In your case it appears that they should be in the corners just a few inches from both the side walls and the back wall.
I’m with Mojo that if you can experiment with placement. I spent about two months moving mine around and adjusting the height until I proved to myself that for my tastes and room layout putting them in the back corners about a foot above ear level with the tweeters firing parallel to the back and side walls sounds the best.
Had I only followed the conventional wisdom of placing them at or near the sides I never would have discovered they could even sound more enveloping. Yes this is my personal preference, but then isn’t one advantage of HT having it your way?
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...putting them in the back corners about a foot above ear level with the tweeters firing parallel to the back and side walls...
That's very interesting.
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...putting them in the back corners about a foot above ear level with the tweeters firing parallel to the back and side walls...
That's very interesting.
I lucked out in that the sweet spot is at one corner of an equilateral triangle formed by the two QS8s and my cranium. As for the height I’m just using the FMS QS stands but my seating is reclined so they are a little above my ears.
I found that by putting them higher up toward the ceiling I gained some envelopment while loosing some directionality. Angling them down improved the directionality when they were higher up however, the 360 degree sound field just seems to blend so much better with the QS8 tweeters at about the same height as those of the M80s.
Thanks for all of the quick responses.
I can not place them at the proper listening height due to a window on one side, and a doorway on the other. So, they will have to be at the ceiling. But I will try pointing them down.
As far as "trying" both positions, I don't really have that luxury as I only get one chance to do this. I don't have the time, nor do I want to have to come back and patch things up.
I will try the sides, slightly forward or rear of the listening positions.
I will let everyone know how it goes.
Thanks again!
One of the reasons Axiom designed a "quadpolar" speaker was to simulate the same experience you receive from multiple "direct radiating" speakers lined on the side walls of movie theaters.
They should be place to the side of the listener. Alan has mentioned on many occasions that the engineering of surround movie recordings are designed for playback on speakers that envelope you, not for direct radiating designs.
My statement does not define the use of these type of speakers. jmo
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...the 360 degree sound field just seems to blend so much better with the QS8 tweeters at about the same height as those of the M80s.
I completely agree with you on that one. My surrounds are placed about 3 feet higher than my M80 tweeters. On the very last track of the Alan Parsons: On Air, a vocalist pans slowly from the center channel to the surrounds. As he does so, it sounds like he is sitting when he's coming out of my fronts and then abruptly stands as he moves to the sides.
Perhaps one way to improve this is to angle the surrounds down.
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Perhaps one way to improve this is to angle the surrounds down.
Angling them down did help a little but not as much as lowering them to the same height as the tops of the M80s. Maybe you will have better luck.
I also got that “standing up” effect when playing video games if an NPC was talking and I was turning my character around so the NPC ended up behind me. For movies I didn’t notice it.
Alright, I spent 7 hours setting up my home theater / builtin speakers Saturday morning.
The end result... Fantastic! I wound up placing the QS8's a little behind me at ceiling height. The speakers are angled down as much as they can be.
My new sound experience is awesome. I also found some more advanced settings on my receiver / DVD Player which have pushed my system even farther than I thought it could go!
The sound simply envelopes the entire room now. The directional effects are truely amazing.
Thanks for all the help! I will get pics up soon!
I love when a system comes together. Yes, let's see pictures!
That's just great! Looking forward to the pictures.