Surround Speakers position

pduhamel

Hi,
I just acquired 2 surround speakers (Monitor 30) from Polk Audio. From the information that I received, I should place my speakers 1.8 meters from the floor just on each side of the seating position and facing each other. Unfortunately, I don't have the option to hang it on the wall. My two stands are only 0.6 meters in height. I was wondering, because the tweeter is at the bottom of the speaker, if I just put upside down the speaker, will it be better or try to elevate my stands with blocks of cement?

Thanks for any suggestion,

thehaens@cox.net

Welcome

I have my LS/FX speakers upside down on the side walls per polks recommendation in the users manual. (they are mounted only 1 inch from the ceiling), so I would say that putting them upside down wouldn't hurt at all. Place it in both positions and try it out, and go with your ears.......

scott

Fallen Kell

Actually what is your room layout? I am assuming this is for a 5.1 surround setup (or is this for 7.1)? Where is your seating in relation to the rear wall in the room?

All of these play a big roll into what the best placement is for the speakers. You may be correct that in your situation, having them on the sides of your seating facing in is the best you can do.

But if there is room behind you seating (i.e. a couple feet), you would be better placing them in the more traditional 5.1 surround setup which would have them about 110 degree angle from behind you (i.e. 110 degrees from the direction that you face with the drivers pointed at the seating area not each other).

THX certs like placement on the sides (so does DD to an extent), but this setup is assuming that you are using a dipole speaker design, not direct speakers. You will find that with direct speakers placed on the sides of the seating position that you will not have as good "pan" efftects (i.e. a sound moving from one speaker to another) in the rears as you will have with the speakers farther behind your seating position.

Now the great thing here is that you should experiment. With speakers on stands, it isn't that big an effort to move them to multiple places as long as you have long enough speaker cords (so make your cords with 5 or more extra feet slack in them if you can).

Now if you are in a 6.1 or 7.1 setup, the sides are the prefered position, BUT if you listen to multi-channel music on this system, you will still be better placing them in that 110 degree position due to multi-channel music is designed on a 5.1 setup and mixed that way as well (same goes for any 5.1 source which most DVD's still use).

My setup is a 7.1 setup, with all direct radiating speakers, and the side surrounds are approx in the 110 degree position. I listen to a decent amount of 5.1 sources (since not all movies have a 6.1 encoding scheme yet and I listen to a lot of multi-channel music). This has given me a more seamless sound stage, which is really put to the test when listening to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" on SACD (probably one of the best mixed multi-channel music I have heard yet). There are several times where they have a person run completely around you, and I can tell you that it sounds a lot more realistic when the speakers were positioned slightly behind me then when they were directly off to the sides.