5.1 + Yamaha "Dialogue Lift" speakers

atlanticjay

Waiting for my new Yamaha RX-A800 to arrive, and looking at a 5.1 speaker package made up of Monitor xx Series II.

Room doesn't allow me to mount surrounds to the wall on either side unless I use stands, and the wife isn't too keen on that look, so I'm planning to use floorstanders (Monitor 50 Series II). But, this obviously won't put the tweeters 2ft above ear height, as I've read is the normal recommendation. Is my surround going to suck by doing this?

If I could make this config work, then I was planning to put up the front height speakers to use the 7 channels. Question here is do I go bookshelves (like the Monitor II 30s or 40s) or in-wall?

Option 3 is to put surrounds in the ceiling, and use my floorstanders as rear surrounds.

Thoughts?

rebuy

How big is your room?

mdaudioguy

Welcome to Club Polk!
No, floorstanders as surrounds won't suck! You know what the ideal is, but hey, we all have compromises to make.

The presence channels (not heights - there is a difference) are intended to be bookshelves, so the Monitor 30/40 would be good there. Dialog Lift is used when your center is too far below your screen, and the dialog seems "detached" from the picture. If that's the case, go for it. Otherwise, it's not necessary.

Unless you plan to add additional amplification, I wouldn't burden that receiver with more than 5-channel surround, particularly since your surrounds are large.

atlanticjay

rebuy wrote: »

How big is your room?

The total room is approximately 21.5 ft x 18.5 ft (7.5ft ceiling when finished) The TV is going to be along a 21ft wall, but that same wall actually has a doorway to an adjoining future game room, so the wall is actually only about 15.5ft long - I am planning to close up part of the passthrough, so hopefully i would have more like 18ft to work with on that wall. There is still a debate about whether to center it to the actual wall itself, or center it to the room dimension of the total wall.

I've attached a PDF which shows the room pretty much to scale. The 9ft window on the right side is the main reason that I can't mount a side surround. Or even if my listening area was back far enough for me to mount the speaker beyond that window, the other side of the room (to mount the other) is too far away, and the listening area may be off-center of the room anyway.

atlanticjay

Thanks, mdaudioguy.

It just occurred to me that I may be mistaken about the "side" surrounds placement. Does it matter how far to the left and right the surrounds are?

I can see positioning of everything that would let me wall mount surrounds to clear the end of the window on the one side and have a matching one mounted on the far side. But, they would be 21ft apart - or about 4 - 5 ft outside the front soundstage on either side.

Is this too far? Or because they go directly across the room over the listening area, does their distance not matter as much. Any sites on "optimal" surround speaker placement only talk about the angle to the listening area, but not the distance.