[Patrickhat]

I'm planning to add a surround sound system to a 13" television. I know it sounds crazy but I'd rather watch movies and play video games on my 13" than on a larger television because I'm really anal about scan lines and can't afford an HDTV (I'm only a poor college student). Anyway I'm thinking of purchasing an Onkyo SKS-HT500 home theater speaker set alone with a Pioneer VSX-D711 receiver. These speakers are of conventional bookshelf size (I know enough to stay away from typical home theater in a box setups) what I'm wondering is since I will only be sitting about five feet from the television will this be a far enough distance away from the front speakers to obtain an adiquite soundstage? If I were to form an equalaterial triangle between my setting position and the front speakers the left and right front speakers would only be about five feet apart. Would this be an adiquite distance for seperation between the two front speakers with speakers that are of convential bookshelf size.


Obviosly I'm a home theater newbie and could use some advice.

 

[Burke Strickland]

Inadvertantly I'm doing just about what you have proposed, using a 14" TV set. I have a front projector and a ten foot diagonal 16:9 screen on the front wall with a 7.1 sound system set up to go with it. But the projector needs repair and my 32 " set "died" the second day after the projector went out of service, so I have a 14" flat screen Toshiba (with component in addition to S-video and composite connections) sitting pretty close to my easy chair in the sweet spot (about four feet away). I have NOT attempted to reconfigure the sound system and actually it helps with the illusion of space to have the speakers set up for a larger screen, even when using a closer-up small screen.


I would recommend setting the small TV on a stand in front of your seat at about eye level no more than about 4 feet away and arrange the left and right front speakers for music (IOW in their "normal" place on stands out in the room, rather than scrunched in close to the TV) and put the center (if you plan to use one) above or below the TV and use your reciever's speaker distance settings to compensate for any distance difference between the L/R pair and the center. A side benefit is you'll already be pretty well set up for a bigger screen when you finally talk yourself into one. :>)


Have fun with it!


Burke

 

[blw]

I had a similar situation for a few months - although probably even more outlandish. It works well enough, although it obviously is not optimal.


I had a situation similar to Burke's - I moved to a new house and the projector wasn't set up. So I had a 20" Wega sitting in the room with a MartinLogan Cinema perched on top and Odysseys on both sides! The center dwarfed the little TV. In fact, the TV looked more like a speaker stand than a TV! One visitor commented that it looked a lot like Mickey Mouse ears...


But it sure worked better than nothing, and yes, the 5.1 was effective - it doesn't depend on the visual image.