Speaker placement for 2-ch AND 5-ch same room


I am building a dedicated room for my gear. I have reasonable architectural freedom, but not unlimited space. Right now we're looking at 15 x 21 x 9 or thereabouts.

I have suddenly realized that I have enough equipment to install two separate systems, one for 5-ch and one for 2-ch. I'm looking for advise as to how to position the speakers. The 2-ch mains are MartinLogan Odysseys; if we go with two systems, the 5-ch mains would be ML Scenarios with Cinema center. The screen is retractable and automated, so I could have the screen drop in front of the Odysseys and place the Scenarios outside of them and slightly in front. I think that putting the big Odysseys outside the Scenarios would start to put them too close to the sides of the room (screen is 92" diag = 7' 6" wide plus tensioning).

My priorities is 2-channel, but I got WAF by making the 5-ch movies work well.

Any other suggestions? Am I nuts?
blw

Showing 2 responses by blw

The screen is retractable, which helps a lot.

I was trying to figure out how to get the 2-ch and 5-ch together in one - in fact, that was my original intent. But tube gear generally is not good with remote controls, and useability of the 5-ch stuff is CRUCIAL as my wife is simply not going to fiddle with more than one remote. In fact, at the moment there are three buttons to push and this is nearly ruining it! If I separate things, then I have an easy-to-use solid state system for movies and an old, muzzle-loading analog tube system for music. The common components are the room and the subwoofer. I was astonished to find that the Descent has provisions for this sort of thing!

Anyway, I'm asking now because the room isn't built yet and I'm more than a little suspicious that my current temporary room won't let me evaluate this. (It's 13x14x7 - can you imagine that with 7 speakers in it? Especially with the Odysseys 4+ feet from the 14' wall?!?!) I should post a picture of it - it's a riot, but all I have until the addition gets built.
Haven't been to Rives' site yet (travelling this week, really busy) but I'll do that. Dropping the ceiling 3" would be no problem whatever - we'll just dig 3" less.

Where is there reading material about this? I know about the stuff at Cardas and the much more general stuff by Robert Harley. I'll definitely dig into the room sizing thing.

Anything else on speaker placement of those five front speakers (2 L, 2R, 1C)?