I don't want any blending of my channels that was not purposely mixed that way, I aim for discreetness every time. Why mess up a good surround mix.
Floyd / Guthrie Say Your Rear 5.1 Speakers Belong In The Corners!
- Thread starter ~dave~~wave~
- Start date
Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:
I just want to hear each channel equally, and want as little blurring of the soundstage L to R and F to B as possible. Any phantom center should be up to the mixer if they intended it.
Blending probably wasn't the right word. It's more of a balance thing. My problem is that my room dictates that the rears are much closer to the listening position than the fronts and center speakers. If I aim the rears at the listening position then my ears tend to "lock-on" to the rears. Aiming the rears at the back wall overcomes this problem. I find that this layout gives me the best balance between the fronts/center and the rears.
In my room, with the 'rears' located as side surrounds, I frequently listen content not only "inside my head" but also the sound seems to come from the ceiling.
I have to check that it is not Atmos, neither upmixer engaged, just 5.1. I also check with my signal VUmeters and confirm no content is coming from the tops.
Then, I stand up and the effect of sound coming from above dissapear and notice coming from the 'floor speakers'. I sit down again and the effect of sound coming from above appears again.
The binaural sensation can be tricky sometimes, and I like it. With the side surrounds at a bigger angle, i.e. more 'rears' these effects dissapear completely.
Conclusion:
The locations of rear speakers can influence very much the sound perceived. You may listen in a very different way as the mixer intended with his studio speakers locations.
madscot
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
After approximately 5 years of mixing and matching and moving things up and down and around and around lol, I have never been happier with my set up, my rear speakers are 7 feet behind my MLP, high up in each corner and pointed towards me, they are turned 3db’s up above the fronts and centre (9 feet away), my up-firing atmos speakers are as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike so I tend to not get hung up on atmos music anymore, for some reason they tend to sound much better on movies !!!
Animals sound freaking awesome with my set up, it’s everything I have been hoping for since I first read it was being released
Animals sound freaking awesome with my set up, it’s everything I have been hoping for since I first read it was being released
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/casters-for-tower-speakers.1055421/
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/caster-wheels-vs-spikes
https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/speakers-on-casters.163848/
And here I thought that you had come up with a novel idea.
yes! that is very true and to me "Centre Back" is often kinda pointless really because many times it appears to emanate just like content mixed in the "Centre Front".
"Centre Front" is compatible with the proverbial 'everything', whereas we know systems such as SQ can have Mono compatibility issues with "Centre Back" content, depending upon encoding method used when the 4-channel mix was matrixed.
i've also noticed "Centre Back" content can image in somewhat more of a "Centre" position (i.e. "Room Centre") depending on speaker setup and relative listening position but in a more conventional Quad arrangement (sat in the middle of 4 equidistant speakers) "CB" can indeed appear to come from "CF".
its been done already! i know of at least one person on this forum who has, or at least had, their speakers setup in just this way, on wheels so they could move them around!
i found upfiring speakers to be a total waste of time for Atmos Music as well.. and i don't need ashtrays since i quit smoking!
now thanks to sjcorne (for persevering with me in the face of crass stubborn stupidity and ineptitude
) i have 4 bookshelf speakers set high up on shelving as Front & Rear Heights and i feel like a new man! 
so glad you're so happy with your setup now! its a good feeling for sure!
Sad but true; makes me think maybe they screwed the pooch and should have given more credit to, and included something like the ol’ DTS-ES 6.1 system with a dedicated Center Surround speaker.
Our brains giving us a psychoacoustical brain fart.
That could explain why the side/rear speaker content is usually hard-panned in his 5.1 (and now Atmos) mixes, but there are some instances where center back is used. In the song "Take A Chance With Me" from Roxy Music's Avalon, the big mono drum reverb appears suspended between the rear speakers.
I've come to really enjoy the use of center back in Steven Wilson's surround mixes, he'll often put trebly elements like guitar solos or backing vocals back there and - depending on where your rear speakers are relative to the main listening position - it sounds like they're right inside your head or directly behind you. It works either way. Special shoutout to "New Europeans" from Ultravox's Vienna, where the main guitar riff is in center back for the entire duration of the song.
Actually the ITU layout is supported by preference research. See Floyd Toole's book.
(it is preferred over quad, for example)
the "inside your head" trick is neat and quite spooky on some material!
basically you place the Rear speakers at either end of the couch (or on each side of your chair/throne/beanbag, wherever your sweet spot/MLP's at) and have the Speakers firing directly at one another with your head directly in between them..
.. and buckle up!!
Not just for the rears, we need casters on all the speakers for when the speaker assignments have been screwed up! (Or in the case of Neil Young's Harvest, to place the speakers in a random position for each track - it couldn't make it any more controversial!)
Last edited:
Like headphones.the "inside your head" trick is neat and quite spooky on some material!
basically you place the Rear speakers at either end of the couch (or on each side of your chair/throne/beanbag, wherever your sweet spot/MLP's at) and have the Speakers firing directly at one another with your head directly in between them..
.. and buckle up!!
M-K
Senior Member
Excellent! Exactly what I think.
yep, just like headphones, hence the headphone smiley emoticon thingy <<
Not by me!!!!!!!!
Basically my setup due to the contours of my room.
Owen Smith
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
I can't listen to music on headphones, I hate it. They produce a soundstage entirely inside my head spread between my ears, and music just does not sound like that in the real world. It's supposed to be spread out all around me and none of it inside my head.
