Surround Sound Setup

[Lee_Stricklin]

I found that many people out there who use surround sounds on either their PCs or home theater setups typically don't know the best possible way to set them up. For that reason I'd like to share some of my knowledge on what I think is the best way to set them up. This isn't the most practical way to set one up, however I found this to work better than anything else out there. OK to get started I found for the corner speakers (FL, FR, RL, RR) sound best if they are two-way (two drivers; one tweeter and one semi-dome) and vertical. You'll also need to make sure that the tweeters are at ear-level. The center will sound best if it is also a two-way but with three drivers (sounds best with two tweeters and one semi-dome) and is horizontal. It should also be closer to you than the other speakers and should be sitting between the semi-domes and tweeters of your corner speakers elevation-wise. For your sub(s) I found two ways that work really well. The first way to implement subs that I know of is to take a horizontal vehicle enclosure and mount two side-by-side home theater woofers in it and set it behind your chair or couch. The other trickier (more expensive) way is shown on my second pic. For the overkill 7.1 setup I would suggest that the side speakers be weaker one-way speakers that can be mounted close to your head (such as in your chair, or you could use poorly insulated loud-ass headphones). When you go to wire everything make sure that all matching speakers have the exact same length of wire, for example: if you FL has ten feet of wire going to it then make sure your FR, RL, and RR have ten feet going to them. Illustrations here on how I would recommend you set a system up:

http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee82 ... 1250579147


In this pic, you can see the subs are done differently. Instead of having two domes in a single enclosure, there are three smaller enclosures at equal distance from each other and closer to the listener.

http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee82 ... 1250580402