System set up in front of corner Vs flat wall - acoustical issues?


The room size is about 22 x 16 and because of lay out I'm considering having a corner of room be the backdrop of the system.  It's a combo home theater/ two channel listening environment.

Each shorter side of the room has either a window or a French door exit, so it's difficult to put the system along the shorter walls which would be a lot better. Putting system in the middle of the longer wall presents a challenge for seating environment. Too much space on each side of this rectangle room.

I haven't seen any systems with main speakers set in front of a corner. It would seem to be a more comfortable layout but I wonder what the acoustical challenges might be.  

 

jumia

The advantage of a corner placement for speakers is the corner and floor reinforce the bass, so you actually have more output in SPL terms.  You can get too much, your ears will tell you this.  If you have tall subwoofers, you get the effect the ceiling as well, so the bass SPL really goes up.  Think of it as a horn subwoofer and you get the idea. 

The same effect applies to the main speakers as well, but to a lesser degree due to the frequencies involved.   But do try it, you might prefer it over other arrangements. 

In my room, the right subwoofers are in a corner and the left channel subwoofers are on a flat wall.  I am going to redo the room so that both subwoofers are in the corner.  It also gives me more seating area in the far field of the speakers and less in the near field, which should be a good thing.

Corner layouts usually work pretty good, even better if you move the speakers forward and the TV back. 

Lots of systems u see speakers maybe 2 feet from the walls and then some room u see them coming out 8 feet from the walls.
I guess there’s a lot to be said byreally pulling out the speakers if your room can handle it

Am I misunderstanding your question?

It almost reads to me as if you are wondering about using one of the corners of your room as the back drop for the speakers versus one of the flat walls being the back plane for your speakers?

The backdrop of the system is the corner. Behind the rack and the two main speakers on each side is the corner of the room.  Angling out the system to the rest of the room from the corner may be a few degrees toward the center of the room but pretty much it's going to be based from the corner.

 

 

So that the configuration will be more diamond shaped than rectangular shaped.

That’s interesting . . . I’ve wondered about that myself.

I would think that the rack being in front of the corner would have some acoustic effect, and I am assuming that the TV will also be in front of the corner . . . will it beside the rack? If so, the corner will be sort of covered up to some degree, so acoustics wise, it won’t be a true corner.

I have always been led to believe that the best acoustic effect would be the speakers in front of a flat wall with nothing in between them, but (all things being relative) my system is nicer than my house is and I have never had much freedom with room to experiment.

About 5 years ago I took my system out of mothballs and moved it to an unused bedroom (by unused I mean not used by humans to sleep in) and until a few months ago, I had some items of furniture (depending upon which side of the room I had the speakers on) either behind me or behind the speakers. After I removed those a fore mentioned items I now have the speakers about 30" from a bare wall and the effect of the sound stage is improved.

Let us know how your proposed configuration works out for you . . the concept interests me.