With today's busy and hectic schedules, many consumers do not either know how to OR take the time to accurately place their speakers for the fullest enjoyment and quality - mind you, the speakers they have just paid a small fortune for. But truth be known, there are no "perfect or accurate" places to put them! There are many variables involved, such as our own personal preferences. But additionally, there is the room layout, furniture, aesthetics, children, pets, and the opinions of all involved in the home. One of the best things about a home theater is that we can create a very organized, well-planned system that provides sound to our home or room with the highest of qualities. We may be able to create such a high quality sound with our home theater speakers, so that we may feel like we are in a huge movie theater. We are not just talking about sound that is loud, but sound that is all around us, making us feel as if we are in the movie itself. With the proper placement of speakers in the room, we are going to experience the highest level of surround sound.
The problem that most people have is where to place their speakers accurately, due to a lack of knowledge in regard to sound and acoustics. The speakers are placed wherever they "fit" or "look good," not due to the best sound they can put out. A room is affected by the sound of the speakers and their reflections; these frequencies have two characters of sound - reinforced and suppressed. What we actually hear in our ears result from direct and reflected mixtures of sound. The direct sound will travel straight to our ears from the speaker diaphragms. The reflected sounds are several, bouncing off many of the hard surfaces in the room, reaching our ears AFTER the direct sound does. These elements will come into play no matter what type of speaker system we get for our home theater. Luckily, though, there are many different areas of assistance - like contacting the consulting division of the manufactures of the home theater system that we have purchased.
One of the best places for our speakers is a minimum of one or two feet away from the side and back walls, with the differences between the speakers influencing their listening abilities. The most important placement is to have equal listening positions between ALL speakers. If needed, physically measure the distances to guarantee accuracy as a 1/4 " difference will influence the audio quality. Another note is that every listener's ear should be on a direct line with a point that is midway between the tweeter and woofer (2-way) or tweeter and midrange (3-way). Another very important point is to purchase wireless speakers, providing us with the most benefits because they can be moved from place to place as we want or need them to be. No wires spreading throughout the room, having to place speakers within a limited area due to the wires or cables - these are all benefits of the wireless speakers.
