For the ultimate home cinema experience, purchasing a set of speaker stands for your surround sound set-up is highly recommended. In this help article we explain how to position your surround sound speakers around your room for the optimum home cinema experience.

The latest technology offers an amazing near cinema sound experience for your own home, and with all technology you need to know how to deploy it. Misplacing a speaker stand or mount can give misleading results which may confuse you when listening to your favourite Star Wars movie. Such simple mistakes like placing a front audio speaker at the back can give mixed results.

Over the past years many audio technologies have been developed. Once such technologies were limited to the cinema, now with the price of consumer electronics falling rapidly for projectors, LCD TVs, DVD Players and cinema standard products like THX certified speakers. Now you too can have cinema quality sound in your own home.

Surround Sound Speaker Standards

Stereo: Stereo sound or stereophonic sound has been a long running standard since the 1930's. Many thought that stereo was going to be a commercial failure with the original set up costs for studios and cinemas being too high. Nowadays stereo is standard across many TV sets. Audio is split into two signals for left and right. Sometimes 2.1 stereo can be used by placing a subwoofer (to add bass) in the centre of the left and right speakers. It is highly unlikely you will need any speaker stands as you can use the speakers integrated into your TV.

4.0 and 4.1: 4.0 and 4.1 audio was a popular format in the 90's which didn't last for long as 5.1 quickly replaced it along with the support of DVD. Not much media was released for 4.0 and 4.1 surround sound due to the limitations of VHS and most CD players. Some CD's were released with a 4.0 surround sound codec, but were never a success as they required the hardware to play them on. Instead high end CD and VHS players upscale audio to make it sound as if it was 4.1 surround sound, but it never actually represented the true audio quality. The only way people took advantage of 4.1 surround sound was through by going to the cinema or by playing compatible games on a PC through a dedicated sound card which was quite expensive for the time. In a 4.0 configuration 2 speakers are placed at the front for left and right audio (L) and (R) and two at the rear for left and right audio being (Ls) and (Rs)

5.1: This is the most popular standard as it is natively supported by the DVD format. Many thought that the 5.1 surround sound format would be as dead as the 4.1 format, but now virtually all new PC's come with 5.1 audio support and a set of 5.1 surround sound speakers. There are three 5.1 surround sound formats being Prologic II, Discrete Dolby Digital and DTS. AVRabbit would recommend DTS as it is one of the best audio formats which offers excellent value for money and is included on most DVDs and DVD Players. If you have money to burn, then I would opt for a THX certified SDDS speaker equipment. A set of speaker stands is highly recommended for a 5.1 surround sound set up to position speakers accurately.

How to Position Your 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker Stands

5.1 Surround Sound– Matrix ProLogic II, Discrete Dolby Digital and DTS:

Three speakers at the front - left (L) and right (R) between 22 to 30 degrees, and center (C).

Two for surround speakers at 90 to 110 degrees to the side or rear - stereo surround left (Ls) and surround right (Rs).

One low frequency channel using a sub-woofer (S).

You should place the front speakers at each side of your television set facing from where you will be sitting. The centre speaker should be placed below or on top of your LCD or Plasma TV, when using a projector you can stand the speaker behind the actual projector screen. All of the front speakers and tweeters should be located at as close to ear height as possible. The rear surround speakers need to be placed up high on the side walls slightly behind where the audience will be seated and should have a di-pole construction.
Future Audio Formats

There are many new formats up and coming for speakers technologies. AVRabbit wouldn't recommend in buying a 6.1 audio surround sound system as this is a redundant format which is mainly used for PC games, although many new PC games can now handle 8.1 surround sound. 6.1 audio is oddly not supported by HD-DVD and Blu-Ray as a native codec, but 5.1, 7.1 and 8.1 are offered as compatible channels of sound.