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2003-01-01
It’s very important to place your speakers correctly to achieve the max. benefit of the surround sound. The recommended speaker placement for home-theatre is not the optimum for surround music in my opinion.
Another thing to take into account is the lack of bass management and time alignment support in most DVD-A players at the time of writing. Even though many players boast about supporting this, the fact is that on most DVD-A players it only works on the DVD-V part (Dolby Digital and DTS).
But to be fair, it looks like the manufactures are finally beginning to pay attention to this problem and Denon’s new DVD-A players support full bass management and time alignment.
If my memory servers me right the recommended placement for rear speakers in a home-theatre is in a raised position about 160 cm from the floor, but I think this recommendation assumes that satellites are used and not full-range floor standing speakers.
I would recommend full-range floor standing speakers all around (even for the center) placed on the floor or with slightly raised rears.
I feel that the best soundstage is achieved by angling the rear speakers as shown below (the center speaker is not present at the illustrations). Note that the rear speakers points to a point well in front of the sweet-spot.
How much in front depends of room dimensions and personal preferences but if the point gets to close to the sweet-spot, an "inside-the-head" sensation emerges, which I for one find very unpleasant.
If you are familiar with the feeling you get from surround music from an ordinary home theatre where subtle music sometime seems extremely "airy", like a breath of fresh air surrounding you, as is the case on Tarzan and Dinosaur, then you probably had the same thought I did: what if you could get music in surround.
Hopefully by now you have discovered that this is just what DVD-A is. The "airy" sound/feeling mentioned above can be amplified by raising the rear speakers:
I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with the placement of rear speakers and believe that slightly raised rears is beneficial for ambient surround music or surround music with subtle strings in the rears, as e.g. implemented on the "Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now" DVD-A, while implementations with a more aggressive use of the rears sounds better with the rear speakers in alignment with the front speakers.
Since I also use my system for movies I chose to raise my rear speakers slightly, thereby optimizing (in my opinion) it for ambient surround music and obtaining a good compromise between aggressive surround music and movie sound.
These are only my own experiences with different speaker placements, here are some more info and other views on the matter:
Adventures in Surround Sound
Hometheater Hi-Fi.
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| © Copyright 2003 - LB |
