Perpetual problems with room size and speakers

[admin_exported]

I'm looking to kit out my new house with an AV system in the loft conversion. The room itself is of reasonable size: 17 by 13.5 feet but is triangular in shape due to the roof. This effectively reduces the room size to about 1000 cubic feet and I presume will add to reflected sound problems.

As there are few demo rooms I've seen with this appearance I was hoping for some advice from you good folks. Basically - stand mount or floor standers for a 5.1 set up?

Cash wise I was looking at the B&W 685 theatre package and hoping for good things from the soon to be reviewed Monitor Audio BR5 package/negotiating a deal on an older package e.g. RS6 AV.

Any and all thoughts would be gratefully received.

 

[Anonymous]

You are going to have issues due to room shape. you will also have issues due to the spring that there will be in the floor. It could easily resonate or transmit too much unwanted sound to the rest of the house.

As part of the conversion did you ask the contractor to strengthen the floor and what is the floor construction and covering?

 

[Anonymous]

As this is a new house to me, I wasn't involved in the loft construction itself unfortunately. I presume the floor was strengthened as it seems quite a good quality conversion but I can always check the survey. The floor is carpeted by the way.

What do you think would be best to help with the sound? Girlfriend related factors mean custom damping would be unlikely to be given the go ahead, although I had hoped to break up the plastered ceiling with something to soften reflections.

 

[Anonymous]

If you are sure the floor is not to springy and you have carpet down then as a next step I's set up a standard 2 channel Hi Fi in the loft space and see how it sounds.

If you get booming and reverberation through the house at your chosen listening volume then the problem will only be worse with Home Cinema. If on the other hand you can't even hear it in the rest of the house or at least it's not intrusive then you should be in good shape. That said I'd avoid spikes on the speakers on any suspeded floor.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Welshboy, you're a real gent!

Will give things a go with 2.1 as part of an expandable 5.1 package. Presumably given your concerns with booming, floorstanders will be best avoided in your opinion. Perhaps B&W 685s are the way forward.