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For a subject that’s becoming more a household, it is a surprise that home theater speaker positioning is still the trickiest subject. Maybe that’s because there is no universal approach to speaker arrangement so to speak. Or just maybe, DiYers fail to read every time they get into this kind of undertaking. Oftentimes what is understood poorly is that every room situation voices for different speaker positioning approach. And the optimal arrangement for speakers can only be acquired as you happen on the sweetest sound spot of your room, which is usually away from the room’s most severe acoustical interaction areas. And this isn’t usually found in the first try.
By reading this article hopefully I can lead you faster to your right mix. Let all be accounted for. The layout of your living room space or the theater room itself provides sound gain, affecting the room’s capacity for acoustics. The materials of the room’s construction affect too. Furniture and accouterments, such as curtains, can provide dead ends to sound. Bleed outlets, like windows, can eat away acoustics. Then there is your personal preference, which adds yet another consideration on how your speaker positioning should be. The best speaker positioning holds these all into consideration and makes the right adjustments.
To make matters simple, let’s start with the ideal room layout, a rectangular room with four equally spaced corners and the north wall section referred to as top. Say the general audio/video component is at the top section, and on the center of the room is the audience’s spot. The center speaker is placed on the TV could be mounted at the top or beneath it. I would personally suggest putting it at the top since the floor can create unwanted noise dispersion.
Then there are the left and right front speakers, responsible for major sound effects and music. One of the primary considerations about the front speakers is that they should be mounted level to the center speakers and they should be aligned to each other to create an even center where sound arrives at the same time. Stand as the center audience yourself, and arrange them in a way that they are symmetrically aligned with the soundstage.
And speaking about the soundstage (I’m referring here to the TV, center speaker and the two front speakers), increasing the distance between the left and right front speaker increases the soundstage. The effect is particularly sweet if you are listening to orchestra music that offers wide range of samples. The immediate walls near the front speakers can influence depth. Increasing the distance from the rear wall adds more depth to the sound, but the sound degrades if it is too far. Of course, room volume always dictates how far the front speakers should be placed.
The surround speakers or the rear speakers are responsible for those subtle sound effects while also maintaining evenly distributed sound levels. They are optimally placed on the immediate sides of the room facing the audience, mounted 3 to 4 feet above the ear level. The surrounds should be set facing each other directly. These helps create an even sound field where no sound is localized.
Other options to position surround sound speakers are installing them at the rear wall. In this case, the arrangement could either be: facing each other, directly facing the side walls, or facing the side walls at an angle. The concept of surround speakers again is not a localized sound, where the sound seems to come from behind, but a sound that envelopes the audience.
Okay, so this is the ideal speaker positioning. But this is in no way final, in fact, this very arrangement should become you starting point to look for the best surround sound speaker positioning. Remember well that living room features reinforce other frequencies as well as eat away some. That’s why I lead you to the next article which is how to calibrate your home theater’s SPL levels.