How to set up my 5.1 system in my room

[Elcs]

Been using my Creative Labs Inspire Digital 5.1 5500 setup on my Digital cable from my Soundstorm-certified board for about a year now and never really looked at perfecting the positioning of my speakers. Recently, Ive been cleaning my room, trying to declutter and go more minimalist... sarcasm about teenagers + clean rooms welcome and Im looking at removing my old Radio/CD player speakers from around my desk area to create more space above my desk for purposes of they arent use anymore and removing them is probably going to help the wireless router get a better signal to my dads machine.

Right at the moment, my left and right front speakers are around 1 foot away from me at what Id guess is about 30 degrees either side of the centre speaker which is directly ~15" in front of me. My rear left speaker is about 110 degrees to my left, 3-4 foot away and the rear right speaker is around 110 degrees to my right, about 8 foot away on top of my wardrobe. I could provide a 360 degree spin around movie of my room with my Nokia 6230 in .3gp format.... not perfect but its probably the best way to show you how my room looks to plan it out.

My subwoofer is sitting to my left and a little forward on top of a few layers of foam. I can kick it with my left foot at the desk. Foam is there because it dulls out some of the thudding noise my parents complain of when its not there.

I realise I could tweak and tweak my volume via. the special Nvidia program but a rogue program or rollback/format could make the process of finding the balance difficult again.

I would be grateful for some opinions on this since sound isnt one of my knowledgable areas.

Thanks in Advance.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I think Ideally you'd want the speakers all about the same distance away from the listening position.

The angles sound pretty good though.

http://www.dolby.com/consumer/home_entertainment/roomlayout.html

If your sub is producing frequencies above 100hz, you'd probably want more of a central location like you have going than a more traditional corner location for a HT sub.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I think Ideally you'd want the speakers all about the same distance away from the listening position.

The angles sound pretty good though.

http://www.dolby.com/consumer/home_entertainment/roomlayout.html

If your sub is producing frequencies above 100hz, you'd probably want more of a central location like you have going than a more traditional corner location for a HT sub.

That setup would be good for watching movies, but for gaming, ideally you'd like the satellites more evenly spaced (the front ones at more like ~45 degrees, with the rear speakers more behind you, at ~135 degrees).

5.1 movie soundtracks just put ambient sounds on the 'surround' speakers, but games will actually make sounds from those speakers for things that are directly behind you in a game. With the rear speakers almost directly to your left/right, the spatial positioning won't be as good.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I think Ideally you'd want the speakers all about the same distance away from the listening position.

The angles sound pretty good though.

http://www.dolby.com/consumer/home_entertainment/roomlayout.html

If your sub is producing frequencies above 100hz, you'd probably want more of a central location like you have going than a more traditional corner location for a HT sub.

Ideally yes but unfortunately not exactly easy to pull off.

Angles are probably right but I thought Id get some tips for how to make my system sound better. Any free appreciable and legal gain is good

That site looks good, I might get a pair of speaker stands to move the rear speakers around to what sounds best. I could definately do with balancing it out at the rear. My computer desk is awkwardly positioned to set up 2 rear speakers but moving it around wouldnt improve anything.