Well I've finally decided to bump out to 7.1. I've been running 5.1 for a couple months and the fact that I have had a pair of RBH CT-5's sitting in my cabinet has finally worn me down. I pulled the stands out of the closet and temporarily placed the speakers and stands behind this sectional, one at the far left corner behind the sofa, and one equidistant from the LCD to the right. I know you're supposed to put the rears further back but there is of course the wife factor and the lack of willingness to wall mount anything on the other end of the room. (Wiring troubles galore as well.) Should the rears, being so close to the listener, aim directly towards the front of the room still? Or would you turn them in a little towards the TV? I know some will say "it's up to you, try it out." but I'm trying to keep things squared away from an accuracy perspective. From the main listening position (yellow circle), the red circles are where I've currently placed them. Height-wise, their currently a little taller than someone's head on the couch, but only by a couple inches. The fronts of the speakers are flush with the back of the sofa. I don't really want them further away because it's where people walk and such. Any HT buffs want to lend their advice, please feel free. TIA.

I'm closely monitoring this thread, as I am contemplating the same thing and our configurations are very similar. I think the conventional wisdom is to point the rear surrounds straight ahead. Height for both surrounds and rear surrounds is supposed to be 2-3 feet above ear level, based on your seated position. Here's a link with some helpful diagrams: http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/34579/129023.html

My only concern with going 7.1, and it looks like it may be an issue for you as well, is: Are the surrounds and rear surrounds too close to one another to optimize the 7.1 effect? Like you, I'm sort of stuck up against the back wall for the rears. It's hard to tell how far out your current surrounds are from the sectional, but it appears they would be further out than mine would be, so maybe it's not an issue with your set up.

I'd like to see some 7.1 folks out there chime in.

Well, actually I'm not backed up against a wall. But the problem is that behind the sofa is where anyone would walk to navigate the room. The right side of the sofa blocks entry to the seating area. Anyone walking the room must come up the stairs and go left.

Approximate distance from the left side surround to the left rear surround is about 6 feet. All the original satellite speakers are wall mounted. They're 'bigger' than the RBH's too. I have the same concern about too many speakers is small area. The main part of the room w/ all the equipment is about 300 sqft. Here's an updated pic. I'll look at your link. (Thanks btw).

One other thing worth mentioning - I'll have to get my 1070 manual back out, but wouldn't setting a delay on the rears in effect "distance" them from the listening position?

One of my co-workers has had a discussion with Axiom's customer service about the issue of 5.1 vs 7.1 and speaker placement. For his room, Axiom has recommended not going with 7.1 because of the seating area's proximity to the back wall. I've had good luck with both 6.1 (old house) and 7.1 (current house), but in both cases my sitting position was at least half a dozen feet off the back wall and I was able to place speakers on that back wall. In general, I think that 7.1 setups are at their best when the listening position is toward the middle of the room and the surrounds (all four of them) can be a little way back onto side and rear walls.

Rather than give up, though, there are some alternatives to kick around. M&K makes a " column surround " speaker that is designed to go directly behind the listener and fire straight up. It's not likely to be as optimal as a more typical surround speaker and they're on the pricey side for surround speakers (assuming you pay at or near list price), but at least a couple folks around here have used them and had good results. If you already had a couple bookshelf speakers hanging around that you could experiment with, you might try setting them up so they fire straight up with the front baffle around the same level as the back of the couch and give it a listen. Speaker stands would be a bit tricky where the area behind the couch is visible (RedSIinPA's case) and it's a rather non-conventional approach, but it's not going to hurt anything to try.

Adding an extra delay to the rear surrounds will just cause sound from those to arrive at your ear later than corresponding sound from other speakers. It won't change the fact that the speaker is very close to your ear to begin with.

OK...Gonk your opinion around here is well-respected.

I'm no expert, as if you couldn't tell. But tweaking volume and delay, could that not in effect simulate distance?

Or maybe the question I should be asking is, given the proposed setup, would YOU do it? (you'd probably try it. I just wonder if my ears discerning enough to tell the difference between good effect and just effect.)

You'll need to calibrate to get equal levels from all channels no matter what you do - that's a given when adding, changing, or moving speakers around in a surround setup.

In a case where the speakers are really close to the listener, setting the delay for a greater distance just reduces the delay applied to the signal by a few milliseconds. More distance means the sound has farther to travel to reach the listening position. Because of this, the receiver takes all of the given distances, applies no delay to the farthest speaker, and then applies roughly 1ms of delay per foot for the difference in distance between that farthest speaker and all the other speakers. The result is that a note played through all seven speakers leaves each speaker at different times so that they all arrive at the listening position more or less simultaneously. All that might result from increasing the delay is calling more attention to the rear surrounds because the signals arrive just a little ahead of related sounds from side surrounds - degrading attempts to achieve a fluid pan across the surround sound field. Think of a ball rolling from left surround to right surround - if the sound of that ball jumps to the rear surrounds before it has finished in the left and then goes silent in the rear surrounds before being picked up by the right surround, it's not going to sound right. How noticeable this will be is debatable, of course, as most people can't detect small changes in delay setting.

If you have some spare speakers and want to experiment, it's an easy enough thing to try out. I would not recommend entering inaccurate distances for the speakers, and I would recommend getting the SPL meter back out and recalibrating all of the channels before doing any listening tests. I'd also probably try two orientations for the speakers: upright and firing toward the couch, and on their backs firing toward the ceiling. When changing the orientation, you may want to double-check the channel calibration levels.

After reading all this I'm still on the fence as to whether the move to 7.1 makes sense for me.

Not meaning to hijack your thread, but if you look at picture 7 in my shutterfly book, you can see where my current surrounds are located (they're the black bipoles on the wall). I would transition those to rear surrounds and then add new L/R surrounds on speaker stands and shoot them at the seating area roughly over top of where the brass lamps flank the sofa. Both room contraints and WAF (wife acceptance factor) mean I'm locked into this set up. That being the case, is 7.1 a waste of time and money???

I've been on the fence for a while and I wouldn't constitute your message as hijacking. We're essentially asking the same question - no worries.

I like the idea of aiming the rears upward. My stands are modular in a sense. The L-bracket that sits atop the telescoping piece is detachable. A little drilling and I could flip the L such that the speaker would lay on it's back.

I have to borrow an SPL meter. As weak as this sounds, I've never used one and I'm fairly certain my father in law owns one. Time to up the knowledge