# Clean slate for HT, how to plan?



## memarcus (Jan 28, 2010)

Hello all. New to community so please for give my ignorance.

I have a 21x15 room for a dedicated theater in the basement. It is currently unfinished and I'm looking for suggestions on how to establish the room acoustics to plan for speaker placement. Specifically is there a general guide to where speakers will generally go? The real ambiguity lies in the sub placement as the other locations are roughly defined as is. However I'll need to run power and signal wires to the "approximate" location of the sub(s). I'm not sure if this can be done so I thought I might ask.

Is there a general way to know if placing the sub in a corner will be boomy or not? I'd hate to finish my room with wall plates in the wrong location only to have to tear down drywall and rewire because things sound best somewhere else. Are there any general math/formulas that can be used to approximate reflections/reverb in a given room configuration?

I'd like to get a general idea of where to put things so I can wire accordingly but I'm not sure how to start. Any suggestions?


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## lsiberian (Mar 24, 2009)

memarcus said:


> Hello all. New to community so please for give my ignorance.
> 
> I have a 21x15 room for a dedicated theater in the basement. It is currently unfinished and I'm looking for suggestions on how to establish the room acoustics to plan for speaker placement. Specifically is there a general guide to where speakers will generally go? The real ambiguity lies in the sub placement as the other locations are roughly defined as is. However I'll need to run power and signal wires to the "approximate" location of the sub(s). I'm not sure if this can be done so I thought I might ask.
> 
> ...


where to place subs depends on how many and how low your speakers go.

The best way to place subs is generally to use a crawl test. But don't do that until you get treatments figured out.


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## Jon Liu (May 21, 2007)

The sub can be the most finnicky thing to set up in the sound system because even 12 inches in one direction can make a pretty dramatic difference. Everyone's room is different and the things within the room, furniture, etc. affect how the sound will be produced. The crawl-test that lsiberian suggested is the best way to do it, but all in all it's more of a trial and error with sub placement.

For general reference, corner-loading a sub will increase the output, but at the expense of tightness of the bass. That's not always the case, but that's a general rule. That even applies to other speakers as well. It's best to pull the speakers away from the walls as much as possible.


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## Prof. (Oct 20, 2006)

When you get your 5 posts up, you might like to show us a sketch of the basement..


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