Choosing a Home Theater System for an Unusual Room Layout

When you purchase a home theater system for your home and the room you want to place it in is a bit unusually shaped, how do you deal with this? What is the best placement for my rectangular room, my small room or my square room? How high should the speakers sit off of the floor?

When you have an unusual room layout, you have to be careful to place the speakers just right or you risk lowering the sound quality. Here are a few tips on speaker placement in different shaped rooms and unusual layouts.

Small-sized room

When your room’s longest wall is less than 14 feet, your room is very acoustically small. Even though you are tempted to put the couch against the back wall, make sure you keep it about 6 inches off of the wall to get a better balance. It may also be best to have the speakers firing straight ahead for a better sense of space.

Rectangular room

This is a more commonly shaped room, but people don’t always agree on the best placement for speakers in rectangular rooms. You can either have them on the longest wall or on the short wall to fire down the length of the room.

What happens when placing the speakers on the short wall is that you will have your room filled with more sound, but you are limiting the soundstage size. With a long wall placement, you sit closer to the speakers, but the side walls are going to help with the size of the space.

Should I elevate the speakers??Placing the speakers off of the floor can be tricky. You can raise the speaker or purchase a floorstanding speaker if your seating is really low or really high. This might help to create better sound quality. Subwoofers are intended to be as close to the floor as possible, so elevating the subwoofers is not a good idea.

Square rooms

Square rooms are the trickiest because of the shape. You can try mounting the TV between the speakers and placing them in the corner so that the sound comes from a diagonal.
If you have a very larger room, small room or oddly shaped floor plan, you can still angle your speakers a certain way to improve the sound quality. Use these tips for the best sound quality for your home theater system in any room.

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