Room Size and 7.1

**the_diyr** · **10-10-09, 07:16 AM**

Ok yall probably are getting to know me a little around here.. And I have come to notice that it is probably going to be a long process until i am happy with my HT setup.. So I went back to basics last night .. I stayed up measuring every inch of my den and since I live in a mobile home this is going to be tough.. My den is 14 foot wide x 15.3 foot long.. the ceiling is vaulted ceiling is 8ft on the sides and 11.5 foot at the peak.. I guess my biggest problem is having to much furniture in such a small room.. I have a pioneer vsx-516BK reciever, Yamaha 100 watt 10 inch powered sub , (2) St-828 Fisher speakers for the front , RSVIDEO Infinity center channel , Dish network DVR, Hitachi 50 inch RPTV , 2-Cheap Magnovox surrounds left and right surround..2 pioneer surrounds rear surrounds and one rear 8 inch altec lansing 50watt powered sub.. I am planning on replacing the magnovox surrounds with better speakers very soon as they are the type that have the 3 inch woofer with that stupid little flat brass tweeter thing in them ,I am also working on replacing all the drivers in the fisher st-828's as well as a crossover upgrade.. The pioneer rear surrounds have 5 inch woofers and cone tweeters and they sound ok for what they are. The RSVIDEO is getting new surrounds for the 5.25 inch drivers..

I have been reading for the past week on setup for the surround systems and I have found a few thing wrong with my design thus far..

1) My front stage L and R are not at a good height in relation to the center channel .
2) my subs are in adjacent corners of the room
3) my surrounds are in the center / sides of the room in front of the listener
4)my rear surrounds ar right behind the recliners on stands at 5 foot tall
5)My A/V reciever , dvd player, and HD DVR box sit on top of the left front speaker
6) My computer ( Home Built ) 512 graphics card (DVI )(s-video ) 4 gig ram, duo core processor , 2- ( 1TB harddrives and DVD Burner is sitting by my chair hooked to a 22 inch acer monitoras well as hooked the RPTV thru the s-video instead of DVI to HDMI..

I guess the other thing is most of my time is spent wondereing where to start..I will try to get a drawing together today of what I have and how I hope it will all come together,,

**the_diyr** · **10-10-09, 07:47 AM**

**tonyvdb** · **10-10-09, 01:00 PM**

For your speaker placement have a look here at the Dolby website. Having your side surrounds in front of the listening position is incorrect and will not give you very realistic sound.

**the_diyr** · **10-10-09, 06:41 PM**

Ok I think thats great but because of the walls and the way my set up is .. If I put the surrounds to each side of the recliners and the rear surrounds behind the recliners they will only be about 2.5 feet from each other on the left and the right. I also noticed that there is only 1 couch in the middle of the room .. Unfourtantly I have 2 couches on either side and 2 recliners right at the back wall.. Also I disagree about putting the sub in the corner as a bad idea.. My 10 inch yamaha sub is in the corner when I put it in the front to the side of the tv I have no bass at all . I also read somewhere that some people are putting the rear surround left and right channels together and to the rear center of the listening area.. I did like the website though very informative.

**tonyvdb** · **10-10-09, 06:44 PM**

Move the rear surrounds closer together, they can be around 4 feet apart. this will still give you much better sound.

**the_diyr** · **10-10-09, 07:06 PM**

So I should take my side surrounds and move the to the listening position which is the recliners and then mov the rear surrounds closer together

**tonyvdb** · **10-10-09, 07:12 PM**

yes, thats the best compromise.

**the_diyr** · **10-10-09, 07:16 PM**

I will get it done .. Just one more ? for now would it be better to put the pioneer ( much better speakers ) on the surround and the the cheaper magnovox on the rear surround.. Or does it matter ?

**tonyvdb** · **10-10-09, 07:23 PM**

yes, most movie soundtracks are only 5.1 so the rear channels are just matrixed from the 4th and 5th channels. The side surrounds will get used much more dynamically than the rears.

**the_diyr** · **10-10-09, 08:15 PM**

Wow it sounds better.. I mounte the magnovox as the rears at about 2 feet above ear level behind the recliners about 5 feet apart .. and the pioneers are at ear level at the sides ear level on the shelfs beside each recliner and wow it sounds great.. Thanks .. Now I just have to get my RSVIDEO front center channel back together and finish putting my fishers back together and I am good for now.. I will probably replace the magnovox very soon

**eugovector** · **10-10-09, 08:56 PM**

I bet it sounds much better. Be sure to reset your distances in your AVR and balance levels.

**the_diyr** · **10-10-09, 09:06 PM**

Thanks for the help ..Just set the distances and levels .. Ran the test tone to make sur everything was right and it's sounding really good.. I also moved my rear 8 inch powered sub more into the rear center position, and straightend out my 10 inch yamaha powered sub up in the front left corner and wow it's getting better.. Once again guys THANKS FOR THE ADVICE .. Big improvement

**the_diyr** · **10-10-09, 11:34 PM**

When I set the speaker distances from a center rear spot in the back of the room I am 13 ft away from the fronts I am 13 feet away from the center I am 13.5 feet away from the front sub Now it gets tricky . (my recliner is only 3 feet away from the right surround and 5 feet away from the right rear surround but I am 12 feet away from the left surround and 10 feet away from the left rear surround ) Now My Wifes recliner is the same way with right and left surround and rear surround .) So I just set both of them as though we were sitting in the center of the room..) Sounds Ok but I cant here the surrounds very good... My speaker levels are all set to 10 ( Highest setting ) ????

**eugovector** · **10-11-09, 01:41 AM**

Quote:

the_diyr wrote:

When I set the speaker distances from a center rear spot in the back of the room I am 13 ft away from the fronts I am 13 feet away from the center I am 13.5 feet away from the front sub Now it gets tricky . (my recliner is only 3 feet away from the right surround and 5 feet away from the right rear surround but I am 12 feet away from the left surround and 10 feet away from the left rear surround ) Now My Wifes recliner is the same way with right and left surround and rear surround .) So I just set both of them as though we were sitting in the center of the room..) Sounds Ok but I cant here the surrounds very good... My speaker levels are all set to 10 ( Highest setting ) ????

Are you using a sound level meter to set the levels?
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**the_diyr** · **10-11-09, 07:07 AM**

I could .. I did it mostly by ear but I can borrow one .. I have a good buddy of mine that should have one from back in the day when he was building his home theater room.. I will call and see if he has one.. I did find out that someone had gone into my speaker set up and had changed my front speakers to small,and my surrounds to large .. So I switched that back and it made a big difference.. My wife loves to push all them pretty buttons...

**the_diyr** · **10-11-09, 08:24 AM**

Found the problem the front fishers were playing really loud when I did the volume sweep this is due to the crossovers in these speakers being totally screwed up .. I have new crossovers coming for these so that problem will be solved.. So for now I had to drop the level on the front L,R - 3db.. Or on 7 instead of 10 according to the pioneer vsx-516.. On another note I couldn't get my wife to be quiet long enough to use the extech type 2 meter that I just borrowed.. So I am going to wait until Football comes on and give it a shot .. My wife gets real quiet when football is on

**eugovector** · **10-11-09, 12:52 PM**

You should start all the levels at 0, do a run with a meter (the only way to do it accurately), and then adjust everything around the speaker whose output falls in the middle of the output range. Turn up our main volume until that speaker measures 85dB (if that's too loud to get away with, do 75dB instead, or send the family outside for a while) and remeasure and adjust. In other words, if you're measurements look like this, make these adjustments:

L = 82 = +3
C = 85 = 0
R = 82 = +3
Rs = 87 = -2
Rb = 84 = +1
Lb = 84 = +1
Ls = 87 = -2

In the end, you should have one or more speakers at 0, and a few minus a few dBs, and a few plus a few dBs.

**the_diyr** · **10-11-09, 06:19 PM**

Worked on it and everything is pretty close my center is a little higher and Left and Right are alittle lower .. Others about the same as you predicted.. Nice sound .. My wife is even impressed.. I got in trouble for picking an old 4:3 60 RPTV for free off of craiglist today though.. Coolant fluid had leaked all over the boards but I did manage to salvage a nice 60" 4:3 frenel lens ( SCREEN ) It was a Mistabitsy VS-60603

**the_diyr** · **10-12-09, 12:25 PM**

I built some real nice metal stands for my front fisher st-828's yesterday they are made form old metal chairs it lifts them up about 16 inches and gets them where the mids and tweets are just at listening level instead of them sitting on the floor.. also I am debating on moving all of my A/V equipment over to a shelf next to my recliner this way it will take all of the A/V equipment off of the top of the speakers and away from the veiwing area . I guess the bad thing about doing this is having to run a 30 foot HDMI cable as well as a couple of 30 foot long compnent video cables I will have to work on this idea. Also since my Reciever has no HDMI just 1 HDMI on the TV itself I was thinking about running one long HDMI cable and then buying a HDMI splitter unit where it will give me about 3 more HDMI ports .. This is going to be a all day job ..

**tonyvdb** · **10-12-09, 12:48 PM**

Glad to see things working good for you John, Enjoy your system.

**the_diyr** · **10-12-09, 02:00 PM**

Thanks Tony... Hey I looked at your webpage .. I noticed you have a WII , I bought my daughter one last year for Christmas.. Talk about fun and a workout all at the same time .. We played boxing for hours until my arm was about to fall off.. I really Like the older stereo rack unit .. Nice work..

**tonyvdb** · **10-12-09, 02:20 PM**

Yes, the wii is huge fun even though the graphics are not as good as the PS3 or 360 its far more enjoyable. I recently hooked it up the the screen in our basement and played Mario cart with the kids. just simply fun family entertainment!

**the_diyr** · **10-12-09, 11:07 PM**

Here are a few pics.. I am currently working on a metal stand for my equipment to get it off of the speakers also I put both my subs up front . the one on the left is a 10 inch yamaha 100 watt and the one on the right is a 75 watt altec.. Also I am using a screwy center channel config until my surrounds come in for my infintiy RSVIDEO..

**the_diyr** · **10-13-09, 10:40 AM**

Hook Ups today .. Still waiting on my new surrounds for the rsvideo and waiting on my crossovers
[img=http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/1933/gotitallhookeduplikeso.th.jpg]

**tcarcio** · **10-13-09, 11:27 AM**

I saw the pic of the sub box. What was the internal volume of that box and what driver did you use? Do you have a build thread for that anywhere? OK, enough questions.

Your set up looks nice, glad to see you dialing it in and enjoying it.

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