Pete Come In, rec on speaker setup for living room 5.1/7.1 Hybrid 15/Onkyo 809

[ruger311]

Posted this on AVS for suggestions and trying to narrow down, but looking hard at the Hybrid 15 in a 5.1 or 7.1 but need a little help with speaker placement and if this could even work/sound good

Thanks in advance, -ruger

Looking for suggestions for a 5.1/5.2/7.1/7.2 speaker setup

This is going in my living room, it is about 15.25x24. Next to it longways is a nook 12x12 and open to one side is the kitchen 12x16. This all could possibly move to another room next year (30 x 25)

Attached is a picture of how my room is laid out. There arent many options on how to arrange furniture due to the door leading into the living room meets the wall by the kitchen then opens into the nook, the bar by kitchen is open to nook and living room.

I have a sloped ceiling going from about 18-20' down to 10-12' it steps down very fast in the middle but more square/flat above the TV area.

The wall unit is 124" of the 141" that i have available inbetween the wall and the door area the wall unit is around 7'6" tall and will stick out about 2' from wall

I have prewired four outlets for surround sound they are at about 10' in height (white plates)

Opposite the TV i have a large rock hearth and fireplace with rock to ceiling with windows on each side, so no way i can use that wall.

setup is:


Samsung 61" DLP
Onkyo TX-NR809
Samsung Blu Ray play
PS3
Xbox360
WII
AIWA old 5disc changer
Sony Turntable
HDDVR

Current speakers available are: I know these are older

Sony SS-MF515 Towers (2-6", 1-3", 1-tweeter)
Yamaha NS-A100XT Towers
Yamaha NS-6490 Bookshelves
Pioneer S-H252B-K Bookshelves
Cadence XSub-12 sub
Cadence C-15 Center channel


This will be used for 30% TV 30% Games 30% Movies 10% radio/cd/ipod. The seating areas are about 15' from the tv on one side and 20' from tv on otherside. We do not have a whole lot of parties but like to get fairly loud when need be, mainly movies/games

I have the surround prewired for the four corners so will hang at least four on the walls about 10' high. The white plastic wall plates are the speaker pre wires in the pictures

Will have a full wall entertainment center soon 8' tall. A picture of the wall unit is attached.

I could possibly keep towers or put two on top of the wall unit, or put two speakers in the bottom two doors(or use for subs)

attached in the pictures you can see what im working with, if you see the blue pieces of tape that is where the entertainment wall unit is going to come to, the piece on the left is the left side if i scoot the right side flush with the door entryway

in order to use towers id have to split the difference and probably not be able to angle the tower on the left at all if needed, it would most likely only have about 8.5" to move around. On a further note on the towers, they could only be 35" tall because the sides of the cabinets open for storage of movies etc

on the entertainment center i have doors on each side i could put a speaker in but to use them i would have to open the door or chop a door up and add mesh to it (not that hard for me to do, esp the lower doors)

if i were to pick up the HB1 bookshelves and use the AM40 mounts would that be a bad thing to do in the four corners, use the HC1 in the center and the 15H right next to the full size couch inbetween it and the entertainment center?

what about adding a second sub or maybe 2 3.3s one by the couch and one behind the big chair to the bottom left?

[ruger311]

one other solution to my front speaker problem that i thought about is to remove the top shelf above the tv, drill new mount holes about 9" above the tv console and set the TV on top of it, then i could do a couple things either lay two HB-1s horzontally(rotated horns) and then drop a center inbetween them

or i could do that above the TV where the shelf is but that will be about 6' in height, not ear level.

or i could use a soundbar from say triad/deftech

looking for options before buying speakers.

unboxed and played with the 809 last night, it is leaps and bounds ahead of my old JVC from 1999

[Pete_Hsu]

Hi Steve, thank you for sharing these wonderful pictures!

The best places to put the subwoofer would be either front left corner or back left corner of the room (as viewed from the main listening position looking towards the TV).

If you could move the entertainment center to the right another ~1.5 inches, then you will have ~18.5 inches of width available in the front left corner of the room. That would be enough width to accomodate a VTF-15H, which has only front-firing radiating elements.

Alternatively, you could place one or two subwoofers on either side of the full size couch, or closer to the back left corner.

Since this system will not be used for 2 channel music listening, then it should work just fine to use four HB-1 MK2 with the AM40 wall mounts, two speakers mounted up front and two speakers mounted in the rear. Since the bookshelf speakers will be relatively high up, simply flip the whole speaker upside down so that the horn tweeter is closer to ear level than the 6.5" diameter woofer is. Presumably the HC-1 MK2 will go above the TV, and you can use the included center channel base to angle the speaker downward a bit towards the listening position.

Thanks

Sincerely,

[ruger311]

Pete,

Thanks for the reply

so do you think the addition of two HB-1s laying horizontal next to the center is a bad thing? or possibly set two of them on the top of the unit closer to center angled down towards the sitting area? (sort of acting like front speakers or front highs?

i see what you are saying on the surround 5.1, would i hook up the front surrounds as surround front speakers?

[ruger311]

I guess what I am saying is if this were to be used for more music as well.

I know we havent used it much for music since usually when we are free we watch movies etc but would still like it to sounds good for music

[Pete_Hsu]

Hi Steve,

For casual music listening, even when wall mounting the sound quality should be just fine! If possible, you can use wall mounting bracket to swivel the speaker a bit towards the listening position.

It wouldn't hurt to try placing the front bookshelf speakers on top of the entertainment center (with the speakers flipped upside down). I do recommend trying that first before wall mounting the front speakers.

Let us know how it goes!

Thanks

Sincerely,

[ruger311]

Pete,

what would you think of one of those soundbars and then 4 of the HB1s in the corners?

[Pete_Hsu]

That may work fine Steve, but ideally one would use a horn speaker as the center channel to have proper timbre matching across the front soundstage.

Sincerely,