Can the front and back speakers of my surround sound system be separated by different distances?

by kevindean

Question by moocowhey: Can the front and back speakers of my surround sound system be separated by different distances?
Because my lounge is L shaped, the front speakers are going to be about 3 metres apart, but the back two speakers are going to be about 5 metres apart.

Is this ok?

Our sofa will be placed parallel to the front speakers (i.e. only cover the 3 metres of the back wall). There will be a dining table in the other 2 metre gap.

thanks for any help!

Best answer:

Answer by Rod P
EXCELLENT QUESTION!

Answer: No worries there. Because a surround-field benefits from some diffusion, the wider distance will not have a negative impact on your experience.

Front speaker placement is far more critical – the rule-of-thumb there is that the speakers should never be placed farther apart from one another as you shall be from the axis that they’re on. In other words, if your head is the top point of a triangle, the base of that triangle (with a speaker on each end) should never be wider than the distance from that base-line to your head. An equilateral triangle representing the widest placement that is still okay.

With the rears, just make sure that the tweeters (or basically the entire surround speaker) should be pointing toward the direction where your head will be on the couch, generally speaking.

When surround speakers are installed directly to the left and right of the seating position, this is sometimes referred to as “the headphone effect” – and it will work just fine for the surround channels to do their thing effectively.

So if your speakers end up behind the listening position, all the better, just don’t forget to “toe them in” a little so they point toward the couch.

Good luck and let me know how it goes!

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