Hey I'm Mark Edward Lewis and welcome to Cinema Sound Studio B. You know the most
requested articles on Cinema Sound have to do with 5.1 or surround mixing and
that kind of thing. Where to put things, how do we set up things, and the most
requested article in that forum is: where do we put our speakers? And I know that a
lot of the people that are checking that out aren't audio people at all--they just
want to know where they put their home speakers--but that's a legitimate...
a legitimate concern. So here's how it goes, your listening environment needs
to have speakers that are equidistant from the listeners. The greater the
listener sweetspot, the greater the difficulty in making
that happen. For example, if you have a single person
sitting on a couch, it's very easy to be able to--just you know--say how far away
is the center speaker and now let's just draw a circle around the radius of that
so that all the speakers are in the same and you're good. But if you have her and
him and more, each one of those spaces needs to also have equidistant speaker
placement around them and that's almost impossible to do. Especially as you get
into surround levels like seven one eleven one and even higher. So what we
need to do for the basics is establish how far away the speakers need to be
from the sweet spot in the middle. Let's say for random figures it's ten feet. If
you have your listener at ten feet from the center speaker, and then it also
stands to reason that the next speaker over--the right speaker or the left--needs
to also be ten feet. Now for those of you who have done geometry, you know that
that means that they cannot be in a straight line in front of the TV or the
screen.That would mean that the center speaker is actually closer, and the left
and right speakers are farther. Which means that the left and right speakers
are not only quieter, but...also that audio is hitting the listener late,
which further exacerbates the problem. Now your surround speakers need to be
the same distance--equidistant ten feet from you. Now where you put them is a
matter of choice. You can put them where Dolby wants you to have them--which is
sort of over here at the side--or where I think you should have them--
which is directly opposite and perpendicular in a line to the other
speakers that are in the front, so the right surround faces the left
speaker and the left surround faces the right speaker, and you get this nice cool
cross across. Your subwoofer? Same thing. Even though a lot of people put it on a
wall or in a corner, again it needs to be equidistant or it becomes too soft or
the audio hits the listeners late. So somewhere in that circle. Now you can put
it behind if you want--it's just a little weird--just as long as it's equidistant.
The same thing happens in 7-1 for the side fills. They need to be 10 feet and
10 feet. The issue comes, however, as soon as you get more than one person on that
couch. The side fills basically get blocked. So the lady on the right, she
gets a lovely entertainment from the right most mid side speaker, but then her
buddy who's sitting on her left completely
blocks the mid side speaker that's on the left. Right? He gets that
entertainment and it totally blocks her sound. So one of the things that I do is
move those mid side speakers forward about 10 degrees, so that they're
coming a little bit more frontally than direct side and we miss that--you know--
"buddy-sitting-next-to-me" blockage of high frequencies. So that's the general
gist. In 5.1 and 7.1 the primary thing is keep all of your
speakers at the same distance to... you--not to each other. Now to that end
you want to have a magic triangle. The magic triangle is also equidistant to
themselves. And what do I mean by that? That means that the left and the right
speakers are equidistant to themselves as you are to them. And that helps you
triangulate where those speakers should be, so that they drop right in so that
they are equidistant to themselves and equidistant to you. So you don't just
have them too far out because if you have speakers and left...if you have left
and right speakers or surround speakers that are too far out, if you're mixing
that means that your mixes will end up being mixed mono. If you're listening,
that means that everything will seem way too wide, and there won't be much in the
middle except for that weird center speaker. So be sure that your
surround speakers are equidistant to themselves and to you--like a nice
perfect triangle. And your left-front and left-right are equidistant to themselves
and to you. And all speakers are equidistant to you and you're gonna have
yourself a great surround setup. Let us know what your problems are--if any--in
your home setup or in your studio set up on the cinema sound.com forum, and we'll
do our best to see if we can resolve them for you. Until then we'll see you in the theater.