Can the front and back speakers of my surround sound system be separated by different distances?

Question

Because my lounge is L shaped, the front speakers are going to be about 3 metres apart, but the back two speakers are going to be about 5 metres apart.

Is this ok?

Our sofa will be placed parallel to the front speakers (i.e. only cover the 3 metres of the back wall). There will be a dining table in the other 2 metre gap.

thanks for any help!

Answer 1

Your world will not come crashing down just because your speakers are out of place.  Having them behind you and sitting in between them is what helps.  They have balace controls to give a little more power if they are farther away.  A lot of modern units have settings to select where you have the speakers exactly, and the high end ones have a microphone to place where you sit and then test the room automatically.

I sometimes have to minimize the surround effect because some shows have too much background and I cannot hear the dialoge.

Answer 2

If you intend to have good quality sound you will not want the speakers to be separated so far and off center if this is not necessary. Although you can make partial compensation for this in some better receivers, some you can not.

Please provide exact model numbers of your speakers and system to give a better idea of what you are up against.

Answer 3

EXCELLENT QUESTION!

Answer:  No worries there.  Because a surround-field benefits from some diffusion, the wider distance will not have a negative impact on your experience.  

Front speaker placement is far more critical - the rule-of-thumb there is that the speakers should never be placed farther apart from one another as you shall be from the axis that they're on.  In other words, if your head is the top point of a triangle, the base of that triangle (with a speaker on each end) should never be wider than the distance from that base-line to your head.  An equilateral triangle representing the widest placement that is still okay.

With the rears, just make sure that the tweeters (or basically the entire surround speaker) should be pointing toward the direction where your head will be on the couch, generally speaking.  

When surround speakers are installed directly to the left and right of the seating position, this is sometimes referred to as "the headphone effect" - and it will work just fine for the surround channels to do their thing effectively.  

So if your speakers end up behind the listening position, all the better, just don't forget to "toe them in" a little so they point toward the couch.

Good luck and let me know how it goes!

Answer 4

You should be good to go with the way you want to set up your system. Not that you really have many options it seems.

Make sure you set your distances correctly in your receiver and that will pretty much take care of it. The distance should be set as the distance from your speakers to your listening position. The receiver uses the distance settings you provide to time the delay of the signal so it arrives at your ear when it is supposed to.

You will also need to set the individual channel volume so that the level is the same from all the speakers at your ideal listening position. Use the "test tone" function on your receiver for this. You can use your ears but if you want to get more critical then you can pick up a decibel meter for about $30.00 US (look for them online). You can then use this to set the volume nearly exact for all your speakers.

If you have all your speaker parameters set properly in your receiver's speaker set up menu then you will not be able to tell where the speakers are. You won't be able to tell if the speakers are 5 meters apart or 10 meters apart. You will also not know which direction they are pointing.

You WILL achieve this result if you take the time to properly set your individual channels' distance and volumes correctly.

Enjoy the tuning. It is 1/2 the excitement.

Answer 5

While the ideal is identical speakers distributed at specific points equidistant from the prime listening position, this is rarely possible.

So ... first, guidelines for surround speaker placement differ (and differ for music vs home theatre), so there is no absolute right/wrong answer. For example THX recommends the rear speakers be placed close together while others recommend further apart. See the links for some references.

Second, the surround/rear speakers in a surround setup normally carry less information and the soundfield or "audio stage" or "imaging" is less critical than for the front 3 speakers so placement is arguably less important. In most cases rear speakers are used to creat ambience or allow movement of sound sources to be recognized (e.g. a car moving left to right) and the interdependence of the two speakers is less important.

Third, your system calibration should include definition of the speaker location (in the form of distance from the prime listening location) so your actual setup can be accounted for.

So, the simple answer is yes, the front and rear speakers can have different separations. That said, placing the rear speakers too far apart, in corners, so they are blocked by furniture, or too low (ideal height is about 2 ft above ear level) is illadvised.

Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Your receiver allows you to add/subtract a bit of volume from:

Center

Left Rear

Right Rear

to compensate for different distances.  Get a copy of "Avia" or "Digital Video Essentials" and a Radio Shack SPL meter. These disks have a tutorial that show you how do adjust these settings to compensate.