Home Theater Speaker Placement
Dolby Podcast Episode 1, November 9, 2006
In Dolby's first podcast ever, Jack and Craig share insider tips and basic advice on where to place home theater speakers. They describe what each speaker is meant to do and talk about their home setups. This episode complements Dolby's online Speaker Setup Guide.
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Mentioned in this Episode
Jack Buser: Hello, and welcome to Sound Matters [now Dolbycast –ed.], the insider's guide to entertainment technology, from the experts at Dolby Laboratories. I'm Jack Buser.
Craig Eggers: And I'm Craig Eggers.
Jack: And we're here to give you the straight talk on everything you need to please your ears.
Craig: You know Jack, that really sums it up. We are here to give our listeners a straight talk on everything they need to set up their home theater system, set up their entertainment system—everything that Dolby's involved with from an audio perspective.
Jack: Absolutely! If you love sound, you're going to love this podcast.
Craig: Truly, truly.
Jack: So listen, this is our first-ever episode, Craig, so why don't we start by just introducing ourselves and talk a little bit about what we're going to be doing here on this podcast?
Craig: OK, why don't you go first, Jack.
Jack: Sounds good. I'm Jack Buser, and I am the Worldwide Technology Evangelist.
Craig: [singing] Da-da-da-da! Da-da-da-da!
Jack: [laughs] I've got a really cool job. I get to go all around the world and spread the good word of great sound—and really get people excited about it!
Craig: Do you get a cheering section and horns and a marching parade with this, or what?
Jack: [laughs] If it goes well, I do!
Craig: Really?
Jack: Absolutely! But you know, I'm really looking forward to working on this podcast, because hopefully we can really get out there and reach everybody that loves great sound. And really, who doesn't?
Craig: I should tell everybody there's a generational difference here. This is really going to play into future podcasts—I can tell already.
My name is Craig Eggers, and I have more than 20 years—I'm embarrassed to say, 20 years!—of experience working in the industry with all of the key majors. My most recent task prior to Dolby was actually working with Toshiba and introducing a little format that had a little bit of success in the marketplace; something called DVD.
Jack: Never heard of it.
[laughter]
Craig: But anyway, I came to Dolby in what, 2002?
Jack: Yeah!
Craig: Has it been that long? Oh my God!
Jack: I've been here for eight years, can you believe that?
Craig: They haven't shown us the door yet, so we must be doing a little something right!
Jack: That's right, that's a good thing! [laughs]
Craig: My current responsibility with Dolby is that of Partner Marketing and Consumer Electronics. My roles and responsibilities involve working with our key licensees and supporting our technologies in their products, and promoting their products with our technologies in them.
Jack: Very cool!
Craig: It's fun, you know.
Jack: That sounds like a lot of fun, actually.
Craig: So Jack, let's talk about our listeners, and how our listeners can contact us.
Jack: Well absolutely. Listen, there's an email address. If you have any questions about sound or if there's a topic you'd like us to cover on one of these podcasts, you can email us at soundmatters@dolby.com [actually, it's dolbycast@dolby.com now –ed.].
Craig: One more time.
Jack: That's soundmatters—all one word: s-o-u-n-d-m-a-t-t-e-r-s at dolby.com. [again, it's dolbycast@dolby.com now –ed.]
[laughter]
Jack: Send us your questions; send us topics you'd like us to cover and we'll cover as many of them as we can on future episodes.
Craig: Should we tell them to send us questions on a blank check or...?
Jack: [laughs] But listen, I'll tell you what. Without any further ado, let's just jump into today's topic, which is one of my favorite topics, actually, to chat about. It's really an area of a lot of confusion out there, and that is the issue of speaker placement.
Craig: In home theater systems.
Jack: In a home theater system: How to set up your speakers at home. I can't tell you how many folks go out there and spend a lot of money on a real nice system. I'll go into a room where they have everything set up and I'll say, "Well jeez, you know—you spent all this money and you've really done your homework on what speakers to buy and what receiver to buy, but you put the speakers in the wrong place! You're not really getting the right experience."
Craig: Precisely, precisely. And you know, a lot of people who come and visit www.dolby.com, come there specifically for that purpose.
Jack: That's right; there's a great section on speaker placement in there.
Craig: We encourage our listeners to spend a little bit of time on our website. There's a lot of great information on our website.
Jack: Great information!
Craig: So anyway, shall I start?
Jack: Absolutely! I think we should start with left and right if...
Craig: Well, left and right are key elements of what we call a 5.1 system. That 5.1 system actually consists of the left and right speaker, a center channel speaker—which in my mind is probably the most important speaker in the house.
Jack: Well, we'll discuss that here in a minute. [laughs]
Craig: A left surround speaker, a right surround speaker, and then that point-one element is often referred to as a subwoofer.
Jack: A subwoofer; yeah, that's exactly right. Here at Dolby, technically that point-one is referred to as the low-frequency effects or LFE channel. So if you see that term tossed around on our website, you can understand that point-one really is there to really generate bass.
So where does a home theater system begin? Well, it really begins with a left and right speaker.
Craig: Right.
Jack: Exactly. I mean the left and right speakers are really there to generate most of the energy in a soundtrack, whether it be a movie or a game. You're going to find that selecting your left and right speaker is so important because you just get so much sound coming out of those channels.
Craig: The sound primarily that comes out of those channels is two types of sound. First of all, your musical swells; the swells that create the emotion in a movie. You hear a lot of that coming out of your left and right speaker.
The other purpose of those left and right speakers, and why they're placed on the left hand side and right-hand side of your television set, is to communicate that directionality. So as your subject moves from the center of the screen offstage, to the right or to the left, literally it is the purpose of those speakers to communicate that directionality.
Jack: Exactly right. Now in order to communicate that directionality, a lot of times what they do is they actually marry that soundtrack with the center channel. Now I know this is your favorite channel.
Craig: This is my favorite channel. I know that all three channels across the front are very, very important. The center channel speaker is the speaker that anchors your dialogue to the picture itself.
Jack: Right.
Craig: In the case of a center channel speaker, you should try to put it above your screen, or below your screen. Or if you have a projection set and you have a perforated screen, some people actually put it behind the screen and can do that. But the purpose of the center channel speaker, quite frankly, is to reproduce 60 or 70 percent of what we hear in a home movie.
Jack: It's incredibly important! I have a great story about this actually. I had my center channel for a long time just sitting on the floor. I use a projector. So much of the sound was actually reflecting off of the floor that I wasn't really getting the performance out of the speaker that I should have. It really just wasn't all that clear. I had sound bouncing all over the room. I had my center channel placed in a place where the sound was just getting messed up.
Craig: Most of these speakers are horizontally designed as opposed to vertically, which is what your right and left speakers are.
Jack: Exactly right! And so much of that sound was bouncing around the room; I could barely understand what folks were saying. I was really not getting that great of an experience.
I talked to one of my favorite folks here at Dolby, Roger Dressler, and he said, "Well look, get that speaker up off the floor first of all, so you don't get those big reflections off of your hardwood floor. Then see if you can lay down some carpet, something like that—some sound-absorbing material—down underneath that center channel. See if that clears up your problem."
And you know what? I have to tell you, the experience just shot through the roof. Suddenly the movies were crystal clear. That was what I expected out of that speaker system.
Craig: Two issues: you mentioned a hardwood floor. A hardwood floor can really cause all kinds of reflections of the audio, and that's not a good thing either. The other thing is, you were laying your speaker horizontally. If it was on a carpet, that would have been even worse because your carpet would have been there to absorb a lot of your sound.
I have a setup like yours, in that I have a rear projection, and I don't really have the ability to put the speaker on top of or any place near the screen. So my two center channel speakers are literally positioned against the projector, but they're aimed so they are shooting the sound up towards me. They're actually tilted up.
Jack: That's not a bad idea.
Craig: As I said earlier, the center channel speaker is probably the most important speaker in the home theater environment. It reproduces and anchors that dialogue.
Jack: The dialogue—if you can't understand what people say, you can't enjoy the movie.
Craig: Precisely.
Jack: I would agree with that. However, it's still not my favorite channel. [laughs]
Craig: So we talked about the left and right speakers. Just one point about left and right: A lot of people take those left and right channel speakers and they position them really far from the television set. You don't want to do that. It creates an artificial feeling of ambience.
Jack: Somebody walks across the screen and suddenly they're shooting off into the next room almost!
Craig: Precisely! You don't want them too close to the screen either.
Jack: You have such a narrow soundstage when you do that.
Jack: Exactly. So you need to experiment a little bit with positioning that. A good setup is usually 3 feet on each side of the television set.
You'll see on our website, actually, the ITU standard, which essentially explains a way to set up the speakers in terms of degrees from center. In that particular diagram, it recommends putting left and right 30 degrees from center. You have to get out your protractor to do this obviously, but you set up your right speaker...
Craig: Do you have a protractor?
Jack: I certainly do indeed, for exactly this purpose! [laughs]
Craig: I don't believe that.
Jack: I have a protractor, absolutely, for doing...
Craig: Oh, come on!
Jack: Absolutely! So anyway, that particular diagram—that particular standard—recommends left and right 30 degrees from center. And if you go to our website, again—www.dolby.com—you can get a really nice visual representation of what that means.
Craig: Cool! One other caveat: Don't ever put those left and right speakers in the corner.
Jack: That's true.
Craig: All you're going to hear is a lot of boom; if you like boom, that's a good place to put your speakers.
Jack: [laughs] But again, you're not going to get that clear high-fidelity response.
Craig: OK, so let's go to the two speakers that I think might be your two favorite speakers in a home system. They are the speakers that really demonstrate the dimensionality, dimension, and the whole total immersion that you get from home theater.
Jack: That's exactly right. These speakers are called the surround speakers, generally referred to as left surround and right surround.
You know, I can't tell you how many times I've walked into someone's room and actually seen left surround and right surround speakers misplaced. It's a real shame because when you have one of these systems and you have those left and right surround speakers set up properly, you get an experience that is second to none. We're talking about a true home cinema experience.
Craig: So you're not supposed to put the surround speakers on the mantel on the other side of the left and right front speakers?
Jack: [laughing] Absolutely not!
Craig: No?
Jack: Now if you refer to the diagram on our website, you'll see what we recommend on the website to have them between 90 degrees and 110 degrees from center. That either means directly to your left and right—to your sides—or as much as 110 degrees back from center. That's to your sides but a little bit back there behind you.
I actually prefer 110 degrees because, hey, they call them surround speakers. Make sure they're behind you!
Craig: Right. You know Jack, the experts actually refer to the surround speakers as the effects channels and the effects speakers. In the early days of the cinema, that was the purpose of those rear speakers: To create dimensionality to support special effects.
Jack: Just kind of like ambiences and things like that.
Craig: Precisely. But now, as that has migrated, you literally see the surround speakers being used to create that whole emotion. The same sound that you hear, the music coming out of the left and right stereo speakers, is now reproduced in surround.
Jack: Absolutely. They've really come into their own as channels, haven't they? I play a lot of games, and if you play games on a 5.1-channel system you realize how important those speakers are, because so much of that game is actually happening where you can't see it. You have enemies sneaking up behind you and things like that. There's a lot of energy in those surround speakers.
So whether you're watching a modern movie, or you're playing a game, or even watching broadcast television in 5.1 surround, you'll actually be surprised at how much sound energy is coming out of those surround speakers. It's really important to get those placed right.
Craig: You've brought up a very good point and that is surround sound is not just for movies. There's a lot of first-class fast running video games out there that have Dolby ® surround sound.
Jack: And over 50 network prime-time shows; just about anything you want to enjoy in today's home...
Craig: Digital cable, DBS...
[music]
Announcer: Craig and Jack would love to answer your questions. Email them at soundmatters@dolby.com. [it's dolbycast@dolby.com now –ed.]
To get more details about today's topic, log onto dolby.com/soundmatters. [it's Dolbycast now! –ed.]
[music ends]
Craig: All right, so we've covered the surround speakers, we've covered the front three speakers...
Jack: We covered the surrounds.
Craig: Now if the surrounds aren't your favorite speaker, and if they aren't your favorite channel...
Jack: [laughs] Listen—one of the most dramatic things I think that folks notice when they first take home a 5.1-channel surround sound system, and they're watching broadcast television, playing a video game, or watching a movie—what they really notice more than anything else is the impact. This is my opinion, but the impact that, that subwoofer can deliver.
If you're watching a good action flick, I'm telling you, and you have a nice powerful sub and it's shaking the walls, that's when you swell with pride that you have one heck of a sound system there in your house.
Craig: So the subwoofer is that point-one that we referred to.
Jack: Yes.
Craig: Now here at Dolby we actually refer to the channel as the low-frequency effects channel. The purpose of that, if you're in a Hollywood studio, literally is to use that channel to deliver additional impact to explosions, to car crashes...
Jack: To reinforce those main channels, exactly.
Craig: And boy does it do it. It's probably one of the best elements in demonstrating a home theater to your friends.
Jack: Sure! And to our earlier point, talking about the surround speakers. We talked about how originally they were used for ambience and things like that, and extra effects. They really grew into their own over the years.
I think the same is true of the subwoofer. I've seen some incredibly artistic uses of the subwoofer in some movies that I've watched recently, most notably some horror films. I've seen the subwoofer actually be used to create creepy tones used for tension. There's a lot of work going down there in those bass frequencies; a lot of attention to the sound design down there. That's why it's so important to get that subwoofer placed properly. It's not just for explosions anymore.
Craig: Precisely.
Jack: There really is a lot of the energy in the soundtrack down there in those bass frequencies.
Craig: In terms of placing the subwoofer, there are a couple places you don't want to go, first of all.
Jack: That's right.
Craig: In the corner. Once again, if you place a subwoofer in a corner you're going to end up...
Jack: You've got that same problem you have putting your main channels in the corner.
Craig: Precisely. I've got subwoofers positioned in my home theater to the left and right of my chair.
Jack: You have two of them. Woo!
Craig: Yeah, I have two of them. A lot of people actually put them in the front, and that's a good place to put them. But there is a way to find out the best positioning for that subwoofer.
Jack: That's right. Well, this is a common technique, and we were talking about this before the show. A common technique, a little trick that I found out from one of the folks here at Dolby—essentially place that subwoofer where you normally sit.
Craig: So get a long cable, connect it to your AVR, and make sure you've got plenty of electrical power.
Jack: That's right. And then set that subwoofer where you normally sit.
Craig: Should you put it on the couch, or...? [laughs]
Jack: Put it on the couch or better yet move the couch and set it on the floor where you would sit.
Craig: Oh, OK.
Jack: There's a lot of effort to do this but it's really a cool technique. I actually tried it myself; it worked quite well. Walk around the room and eventually you're going to find a spot in the room that actually sounds really good. You're going to say, "Wow, the bass sounds really good right here where I'm standing." Put your subwoofer there. Put your subwoofer right where you're standing.
As a result, due to the way sound works in the room and the fact that it's all basically—what's the word I'm looking for—symmetrical, essentially you will have a wonderful place to put your subwoofer in terms of audio fidelity.
Craig: So let's see if we've got this. We put the subwoofer where we would normally sit, we move around the room to find a place where it sounds the very best. And that's obviously going to be a place where we are going to want to put our subwoofer.
Jack: Yes.
Craig: You know, one thing when you walk around that room and you're listening to all the different possibilities and variability of that surround, you might hear nothing at some point sometimes.
Jack: That's right.
Craig: There's a thing called a null point or a standing wave that can be generated by the subwoofer reacting negatively with the whole room environment and the dimensions of the room. We'll talk about that in a future episode.
Jack: That's true.
Craig: But if you don't hear anything coming from your subwoofer, please move someplace else.
Jack: That's very true. And there's another thing we should take into account.
[noise]
Oh, sorry, I hit the mic boom here.
Another thing you should take into account, actually, is the fact that you're probably going to have more than one person listening to that subwoofer. So while my little trick that I told you earlier is kind of cool for one listener, actually probably a more practical way to go about it is just to hook up your subwoofer where it's not in the way, where it's kind of convenient for you.
Sit down where you normally listen and see if it sounds good, and if it doesn't, try moving the subwoofer a little bit. See if that fixes the problem. Just move the subwoofer around; try different listening positions as well.
Remember, you're probably not going to be the only person enjoying your home theater system. So you want to sit in every position on the couch and just make sure that the sound sounds proper. There's really no hard and fast rule here, you're going to have to trust your own judgment more than anything else. I think that's a more practical guide than folks moving couches and placing the subwoofer on the couch. I might do that, but... [laughs]
Craig: Let's just say one other thing about the subwoofer. Whether you have a home theater box system or a conventional full-range system that's capable of reproducing every possible frequency in the universe, literally the job of the subwoofer changes. When you've got a small home theater box system you've got the smaller speakers that are really limited in terms of their frequency performance; maybe they can only do midrange and high. A lot of those low-frequency signals, those bass signals that would ordinarily go to those main speakers of that 5.1 system, are redirected.
Jack: To the sub!
Craig: To the subwoofer.
Jack: That's right.
Craig: So it performs the functionality of providing that low-end extension that you'd normally get from big tower speakers.
Jack: That's right.
Craig: And actually it enables you to have smaller speakers in your system.
Jack: That's exactly right. If you think about that, that subwoofer not only has to take into account the low-frequency effects channel in the film or in the game, but oftentimes, if you have small speakers as your main speakers, it's basically taking care of the bass from all those main channels as well, depending on how you have your system set up. So I think the subwoofer is just such an important speaker as a result of exactly what we're talking about here.
You really want to make sure, if you're out there shopping for speakers, to really select a nice subwoofer. Something that you really like the sound of, something that can deliver some impact, but also something that can timbre-wise match your main speakers.
Craig: Our producer is throwing his pencils at me. But before we get out of here we've got to talk about one other thing, and that is the surround speakers.
Jack: Yes.
Craig: If you go to dolby.com, you see the ideal setup for a 5.1 system. I just want to iterate, you know what, that is the ideal setup.
Jack: Yeah.
Craig: And if your home can't support having rear surround speakers in place all the time, go out and buy some longer speaker cable. And when you're ready to watch the movie—maybe you store your surround speaker someplace else in the room close to the main speakers—bring them out to their designated positions, put them in place, sit down, and enjoy the movie.
Jack: Absolutely. Now for folks that don't necessarily... A lot of times folks, they can't put their speakers in that ideal position and maybe they just don't want to move their speakers a lot into the ideal placement. The advice I give a lot of folks is just get it as close as you can.
If you're not exactly at 110 degrees, if you've got to go a little bit more to the back or a little bit more to the sides, it's OK. Just get is as close as you can to that ideal setup. You want the speakers, obviously, to look attractive in the room, you don't want to be tripping over them all the time.
Craig: Yeah, you don't want that.
Jack: Exactly right. So you want to make sure that they're placed somewhere where you're actually going to enjoy your setup and you're going to get as close to that ideal configuration as possible.
Craig: And if you can't get the ideal configuration, that's OK.
Jack: That's OK. Absolutely.
Craig: For example I've got a 5.1 system downstairs and I sit very, very close to the right surround speaker. Well, I can, literally in the A/V receiver, adjust the dimensionality and the gain for the left and right surround speakers.
Jack: That is a good topic.
Craig: So that helps to balance out where I'm sitting to create a more balanced surround effect.
Jack: Absolutely.
Craig: We'll cover that in a future podcast, definitely.
Jack: That's really good. Yeah, you can definitely compensate for some of these things in the A/V receiver. Oh, that's a good topic.
Craig: Yeah. So the next subject, we're going to talk about high-definition video.
Jack: High-definition, yeah. Blu-ray and HD DVD and the kind of great sound those formats can make.
Craig: Incredible audio quality in these next-generation formats.
So, I'm Craig Eggers, and you are?
Jack: I'm Jack Buser.
Craig: And this is Sound Matters.
Jack: Yeah. Thank you for listening. Remember soundmatters@dolby.com [now dolbycast@dolby.com –ed.], send us your questions, send us your topics you want us to cover. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I hope you learned something. And I'll see you next time.
Craig: So I've got to do the obligatory: Sound Matters is a production of Dolby Laboratories. See you all.
Jack: Bye.
[music]
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