surround speaker placement?

[soler]

been trying to find if the way i want to set my speakers up are find, im not sure what to do as of now but that is why i came here.
im sitting about 3 feet away from the wall behind me, i am not sure where to place the speakers, all the guides i read say that u need to place them in an angel behind u while they are on a stand, or to the sides aiming directly at each other, i do not have this option, my only option is to set them up on the wall behind me, they are not bipolar so i hope that they will sound good anyway.
my biggest concern isthat i will place them in a way which they wont do what they are ment to and that is make me feel like a car just passed me or something like that.
so basically what i am asking is how far apart do place them from eacother and what height.

[Mr Peabody]

Ideally the rear surround should be about the same height as the fronts but they sometimes have to go higher to fire over high back furniture etc. I would put a shelf on the rear wall for each one so you can angle them toward your sitting position. Put them the same distance from you, and i would spread them out as much as you can unless the room is very wide, you just don't want them close together. If your receiver has auto set up, those programs do pretty well at equalizing for odd placement.

The Dolby website gives some diagrams for speaker placement.

[2992Ohio]

Four quarters, and then the bass. I have mine, one under the tv, one to the left, one to the right, two behind the couch on each side pointing towards the middle of the room. My bass is wireless and is under my couch.

[StevenSurprenant]

First off everyone has different preferences and all are correct in terms of personal satisfaction. This is what I did which gained me what I consider the optimum surround effect...

I had the same situation as you since my back wall is close to the couch. When I placed them directly facing me in the rear, the sweet spot was in the center of the couch and anywhere else, I just heard one of the speakers which ruined the surround effect. Since the speakers were so close I was constantly aware of them as point sources which also bothered me.

My speakers are dipole Magnepan so I realize that we are talking apples to oranges here, but wait for a moment and I might have a possible solution for you. I finally ended up mounting them on the walls on each side of the room behind the couch facing at a 45 degree angle from each corner. These maggies are meant to hang on the walls. For my situation the surround effect is optimal. They create that huge cavernous sound that makes the walls of the room melt away and they never distract me as point sources.

I realize that you said that you have limited placement issues and I'm not sure about your room configuration, so I'm just guessing here. If you have side walls on each side of your couch, you might be able to turn the speakers to face these walls and away from you, using the side walls as sounding boards. You will have to set your speaker distances to account for the distance from the speakers to the wall and back to your seating position. You might also have to equalize them a bit. Keep in mind that if you do this, speaker height is not so important since you're using the side walls as reflection points for the primary sound. You could even set them on the floor behind the couch facing slightly upwards at the side walls.

While, according to the people who designed surround, this placement is not optimal, it still might get you closer to what you want. Even facing them up at the ceiling is another possibility. Only you can know by trying it.

Anyway, it's just a thought.

Best of luck!

[paulsmuk]

are there any good replacement surround speakers available? as you can tell I am fairly new to this, I want some that look a little more meaty.

[paulsmuk]

my seat for my surround sound is against the back wall, so there is no chance of my speakers being set behind me, question is should I just point them straight in towards me or still angle the forwards at an angle