Hello AVS people of good will. I'm currently remodeling and rearranging my bedroom and I need some help with speaker placement. My HDTV, Entertainment center and front left and right speakers will be against this wall.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3449/3381072299_bec0d84169.jpg

The HDTV will be about 9' away from this wall to the back wall, which is where I intend to place my sofa bed. The wall on the left side in this pic.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3630/3381892666_08bdc1f775.jpg

The dilemma I have is that the side wall where the right surround speaker should be placed is a lot farther away (9' from the listening position to be exact) than where the left surround speaker would be (6' from listening position).

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3550/3381073749_c0751309e8.jpg
(right surround placed above shelves 9' away from listening position)

I plan to place the sofa bed against the back wall, but I've read that it's best to have the surround sound speakers 90 degrees from the listening position. If I have the sofa bed on the back wall, my surround sound speakers (which are Def Tech BP1.2X Bi-pole Surrounds) would be too close to the corners if I placed them 90 degrees. I was thinking about pulling the sofa bed about 1-2 feet away from the wall. If I do this, the surrounds wouldn't be as close to the corners of the room, but yet still close. So my questions are, would having the surrounds about 2 feet away from the corner of the room still give me a good surround sound effect? Also, the right surround would be 3' further away from the listening position than the left surround. Is this okay? I also purchased some pro monitor 100s to use as surround backs. Would it still benefit me to use them in this situation, with the sofa bed being only 1-2 feet away from the back wall? Should I just forget about the surround backs, and work with a 5.1 setup? My AVR should compensate for the 3' difference when I run the auto calibration, correct? I know that speaker placement is critical to the immersiveness of the movie being watched and I just want to make sure that I'm getting the most out of my system. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to add pics to help illustrate what I'm trying to do.

I talked to Chet from Definitive Tech and he said that rear wall placement would still give me a good surround sound effect so I'm just gonna go with a 5.1 set up, and maybe use my pro monitor 100s for presence speakers.

Hi,

That room is way too small for 7.1. A 5.1 setup will do just fine. As Chet said, the rear wall placement work. Are you mounting the surrounds up on the wall? If so, place them about 1-2 feet above you ear level when seated and aiming towards the center of the couch/bed. It should give you a decent effect. Also, the AVR will correct for the distance (or you may have to input the distance depending on what AVR you have). You can tweek the angle of the speakers once the setup is done to your liking. As far as having 'presence' speakers, just test it and see how you like it. It may 'smear' your effects or add to it.

Ray