Home Theater Centre : on shelf?

[Dolby]

Do you think placing this on a closed shelf / built into a TV stand that it would effect sound?

There'll be 2cm on top and either side - and that back is totally open. Opinions?

[NoADSLyet]

Do not matter as the mid to high frequencys are propelled forward in the direction the center speaker face and is thus directional, such as, but not as directional, as the tweeter.. The alignment with the front speakers is more important. Therefore most reputable systems have a distance calibration for all speakers to compensate for the alignment.

Anyway, let your ear be the judge, it is still the best measurement tool and is for free. Only the brain can confuse the measurement results

[Dolby]

Anyway, let your ear be the judge, it is still the best measurement tool and is for free. Only the brain can confuse the measurement results

Thing is I've been designing an AV unit for about 2 weeks and it isn't built :/ But thanks.

[BitRogue]

Do you think placing this on a closed shelf / built into a TV stand that it would effect sound?

There'll be 2cm on top and either side - and that back is totally open. Opinions?

Not quite sure what you're alluding to. Home theatres are typically made up of about 6 speakers and 3 electronic components, namely a receiver, DVD player and TV.

The electronics can go anywhere. The placement of speakers, however, are more scientifically calculated. If you're building an AV receiver, or a set of monoblock amps, then by all means, put em in a nice looking box and place it on a convenient shelf somewhere. Remember that if you're putting a nice big heat sink onto it, then it should go somewhere where theres mostly unrestricted airflow. It wont, however affect the quality of your sound, that is, of course until it starts getting very hot.

Quality of sound of course, largely depends on a combination of the quality of your amp, quality of loudspeakers and placement of loudspeakers (and a few other things like cabling, shape and surface absorbtion of your room etc)

[dotVIBE]

I assume you are reffering to the centre speaker? shouldn't really have any impact. Centre is really mid-hi & hi frequencies only, and as noadslyet said, directional, not radiating.

[Dolby]

Thanks dotVIBE, my resident home theatre expert ;)

And no need to assume - I stated ;)

Bitrogue - I wanted to place my centre in the cabinet below my TV set - but actually on a shelf designed for an AV component. I was worried that by placing the centre speaker on this shelf (closed above and below) it may effect quality.

[dotVIBE]

not really, for real expert advice (i.e. where i get my advice) visit the forums at www.audioholics.com & www.avsforum.com

[BitRogue]

Bitrogue - I wanted to place my centre in the cabinet below my TV set - but actually on a shelf designed for an AV component. I was worried that by placing the centre speaker on this shelf (closed above and below) it may effect quality.

OK, I understand now - you mentioned 'Home Theatre Centre' as in the centre speaker of a home theatre system. I read it for the whole system (as in a Hi Fi centre).

The only thing about the centre channel is that it should typically point directly at the centre of your seating arrangements, and alligned directly above or below your TV / monitor (its the most used channel in 5.1 because the sounds it conveys usually come from directly what you see on the screen). As long as it's not closed in FRONT of the speaker, or you havent recessed it far back on to the shelf (preferably not at all), then there shouldn't be any quality loss.

There is also a practice to try and keep the centre speaker horizontally aligned to the tweaters of the front left and right speakers. The theory behind this is that the waveforms generated by all the speakers work in harmony to produce the most effective experience. This may be true but isn't always practical when your screen covers that piece of real estate.

Also watch out for magnetism from the loudspeaker cones if its too close to the TV screen.

[Dolby]

Urgh ... problem insuring this. Hollard say it has to be specified but specified items need to be a certain percentage of your household apparantly? Does that sound right?