Is there a "correct" placement for in wall speakers such as that of a movie screen, or is it totally dependant upon the room? Do any of you use a formula, or is it just where you think the sound will be best? I am wondering about the height and how far apart in wall speakers should be.

With 5.1, I try to create an equilateral triangle from the listening reference point and place my rear surrounds at 110 degrees in reference from the center channel or 20 degrees behind you. Of course this isnt written in stone. I like to play with my speaker placement depending on the acoustics of the room but in a perfect world I follow the above for prewire purposes and use as a good rule of thumb. Hope this helps

[Link: silcom.com]

Thank you. What about for whole house audio? Is there a standard for how high speakers should be placed, or does that again depend upon the room?

Depends on room, furniture placement, ceiling height, floor composition, interior designer, and other contractors. Sometimes people don't really care, but designers want in-ceilings to line up with lighting cans, and you also have to watch out for HVAC ducting and electrical conduit being in the way. We usually put up a template before the other contractors start so they know to avoid that bay with their mechanicals. If placement is a problem for aesthetics, try invisible speakers, like stealthacoustics.

this is a joke post.....right?

Nice link.

Apart from a little incredulity about the very general question; it depends.

I don't like L and R's any wider than the width of the screen from the edge of the screen. Of course, that's bunk if you have a large screen in a small room.

In the old days when we didn't know any better, we had salesman telling people that you need to spread out speakers as far as possible, and they layed out L and R's accordingly. Yech.

Ed,

I don't appreciate you asking if everything I post is a joke. If you have nothing constructive to post, then don't post at all. We are not all as smart as you.

TCA,

It is best to come up with rules for yourself so you can answer questions immediately in front of a client. Take some average rooms sizes consider windows, heavy furniture, area rugs for hard reflective floor surfaces. When you carry arround some mental examples with you, you can make recommendations for in-wall,in-ceiling in your conversation and back it up with why.

Example, in most homes we do, people want speakers in their living room (room without the tv). I almost always recommend two pairs of in-ceilings. They question why two pairs in that room and not in other rooms. I ask them what they will doing in that room. They reply, reading, entertaining, Christams tree whatever. I explain that more than likely they would like the sound distributed well in the room without having to crank the volume on a single pair. Conversation never goes further, they get it.

If you have a high end client who is concerned with audio quality but is not willing to sacrifice room aesthetics, check out equalization like [Link: hometheateraudiocontrol.com]
It's not cheap but it works great.

This is a link to recommended reading from RPG diffusors. Check out one of these books, the knowledge you'll gain that you can spout off to your clients with confidence will help you make a lot of sales. [Link: rpginc.com]

tca... if you have not figured it out... i am the village idiot, and a smart ass to boot.

its all about the room , designer(interior) and the wife......

for me i like to keep my sound field all on the same plain typically i will do this with a laser. i like direct raditing speakers for my rears and not dipoles(unless 5.1)..... again same plain as lcr

as for lcr i like wider but not too wide.... i like to keep about 4-5 feet between lcr on a 100 inch screen depending how the room sounds...( i will move in or out to get best sound field) as for my l&r rears i like to have them inline with primary viewing area....
l&r center behind primary listening area or in ceiling if the room cant handle normal speakers in that location....

hope this is a better post

ed

as a professional it just seems like a ci 101 question to me. so i thought it was a joke.... i could see a diy guy asking it but not a seasoned pro. now if you were asking for a better way to do things that would be what i would expect from a veteran av guy...... and not generate some idiodic bullcrap post from me. so no blood, no penalty...

ed you forgot..

hire a pro..

Ed,

I'm no where near a pro, I'm somewhere in the middle. A lot of the questions I ask because I like to get the opinions of all of you who know a lot more than me. I know most of the answers, but I like to get a feel of what everyone else is thinking and doing. I asked this question because I have to install whole house audio in wall speakers in a room with 25 foot ceilings and I wasn't sure how high to mount them. So what I wanted to know was:

1. How high do you normally mount in walls in a room with 10 foot ceilings, and
2. How high with 25 foot ceilings.

I thought maybe you used a formula of some sort to determine height.

hire a pro...lol

It can depend a little on the speaker... some have tweeter elements you can angle down or up or side to side... Basically I always try to position the fronts so that the tweeters are at about ear level when your are sitting.

for the sides and rears, there are a few different opinions out there, but I usually set them around ear level as well (when possible)... although unless they are behind fabric walls, sometimes the 'designers" might raise a stink!

Now, not to muddy the waters, but there some guys who like to mount the sides and rears up closer to the ceiling to get a little smearing or reflected sound... Their thought is that it reduces the directionality a bit, so that you get more of an ambient effect - and it makes it a little harder to "locate' where the sound is coming from...(but that is for the sides and rears).
personally, I try to stay away from ping-ponging the sound around.

cied--- had a good suggestion of using a laser to help in set up... aim the laser towards the main seating area or where you think people would be seated most often... Now, this is kind of old school, but in your mind's eye, try to imagine each speaker's sound as if it were a narrow flashlight beam... as as the frequencies go up... generally the dispersion patterns become narrower... so if you can position the speakers so that the mids and highs are not aiming at your feet, or over your head...but ear level you are in the ballpark...If you have to go into the ceiling for the rears... I generally don't mount them directly over head... usually 3 to 6 feet behind... Anyway that's just one opinion... In terms of distance apart (for the fronts) again depends on whether or not you can angle the tweeters... but the old' equalateral triangle formula still seems well acxcepted... if the front L&R's get too close to the corners, you'll get a little muddiness from the wall reflections, unless you can add some acoustical panels or damping around them to help soak up all the primary reflected junk. Hell,
when all else fails as Ed says...hire a pro!

Thanks. That's what I was thinking, however, what if you have a room where people stand and sit just as often? I would guess you would then mount the speakers at ear level while standing?