Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems 5.1 Surround Speaker Height Compromise

Hi folks, just moved and setting up my system for what I hope will be the last time so want to get it as perfect as possible. This time around I can get my surround speakers slightly behind and to the side of the listening position close to what Dolby recommends, albeit only about 2-3 feet between the front grill and my ears. Now I appear to have a decision to make…

1. Match all 5 tweeter heights (I have 3 verticals DSP3100s and 2 DSP33s) but have the surrounds blocked from a clear route to my ears by the back of the couch.

2. Raise the height of the rears so the tweeter (centre of the speaker in the case of the DSP33s) is unobstructed by the couch - but here the path of the bottom woofer would still be obstructed.

3. Raise the height of the rears completely above the couch - no obstruction but tweeters between front and rear would be around a foot different.

There maybe a fourth scenario as I use +1 on the electronic height correction to get the fronts firing to ear height - the dsp3100s on stands are about 6 inches below ear height. As you don’t appear to be able to make the electronic height correction independently between front and rears then presumably I would need to point the rears approx 6 inches below ear height therefore they would need to be mounted even higher on the wall to avoid being obstructed by the couch, and at quite a significant angle.

Am I overthinking this or will the options I’m toying with actually make a noticeable difference. I’d prefer only to drill one set of holes and get it right first time…

I guess the crux of the question is what’s more important for SQ, matched tweeter height or unobstructed positioning or somewhere in between… 1st world problems!!

This was the choice to make in my theater as well, and I went "unobstructed" with rear DSP33s equal distances behind the prime listening/viewing area. They are mounted above, about 8' apart, facing down (and forward) towards the seats where a central listener's ears would be one point of a 8' x 8' x 8' triangle. They extend through slots cut in the soffit above which my projector is installed, so people walk under them when entering the 17' x 28' space.

Have you noticed how in commercial theatres the surround speakers are always quite a bit above your listening level? There are obvious reasons of seating layout that require this and I do not know whether cinema Dolby etc allows for this in their cinema codecs, but it seems to work well. Have you considered having the speakers higher but tilted down a bit - easy to do if they are wall mounted. In my cinema I have my sides and surrounds higher up and tried tilting down but preferred the less focussed sound of having them just firing over the top, so to speak. After all, the purpose of surrounds is to provide ambience so, unlike fronts, I don't think it matters for imaging that they are exactly at ear level, as my experience of commercial cinema reinforces.

From a THX specialist

(And


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How reassuring! The layouts you describe are exactly what I have done by experimentation and listening, but I was unaware that THX take this view, though I suppose what commercial cinemas do is likely to have been guided by THX.

Me too.

Only the front left and right are toed in.

Thanks guys, strange that THX has a different layout suggestion to Dolby. Wouldn't you go with Dolby's recommendations give that's how the majority of content is encoded?

The goal of THX is to recreate the sound of a theater, with a lot of surrounds speakers, at home...
It's for 7.1 only, not for Atmos.
All the THX tricks we have in our processors have the same objective.

In a theater, surround are in height...

Having them at ear height is good for multichannel music.
Or Atmos, because there is another layer in ceiling.

But in 7.1 (and THX method), the goal is to have a diffuse surround sound, like in theater, with one layer only.

Makes a lot of sense when you put it like that. Can't wait to install them up high... Wonder how close that will get me to an Atmos-like sound. As you can see from my kit, there's pretty much no way to achieve Atmos without starting all over again . Would have been nice if M's 271 could have directly accommodated legacy equipment to at least give me a chance, but that's a gripe for another day....

Really stoked with my current setup though - even without the surrounds mounted properly. Just got super lucky with the room. Sub sounds by far the best mounted centrally directly behind and up against the couch. Very surprisingly (to me) the thumping bass seems to come right from the front trio and I get the added bonus of feeling it through the couch - its like having a free pair of actuators under the couch! LOVE IT! I have an idea of the theory but hearing it in action is very different and its by far the best room I've ever had - and not a single treatment. Good job as I've just bought the place to settle down in .