I just moved into a new place and am trying to set up my speakers. My front speakers are fine, but I have a problem with the layout of my living room for rear speakers. My living room/dining room is about 19' long, and the living room portion is probably accounts for about 9-10' of that. Right rear speaker will go in the corner, no problem, but with the layout of the wall, I have about 8' of space and then a window, I don't want the left rear to be 3-4' removed from the main listening area especially when the right rear is only about 1' removed.
I have beam that runs along the ceiling, can I hang the speakers there and angle them down or does anyone else have suggestions on how to get around this?
Also, what do you guys use to cover up speaker wire running down the walls?
It makes sense Jonathan. The house I moved into came with fronts built into the wall and rears in the ceiling. I have seen fronts and rears in the ceiling at my friends house. As to hiding the wire. Run the wire up into the ceiling then across to the wall where you have your receiver placed and drop it down to behind the receiver, cut out a receptacle box in the wall behind your receiver and connect the wires there to be patched to your receiver.
If you have no access to your ceiling from above then run the wires along the beam to the wall which provides a continuous path to your receiver. Go through the wall at the ceiling and come out at the top of the baseboard. Then run it along the base of the wall back to your receiver. Make sure to set up your speaker distance based upon wire length not how far the speakers are from you.
What sort of rear speakers are they? If they're bipole or dipole surrounds, hanging them from the ceiling would would since I've read it's recommended these speakers be mounted higher above the listening position. If they're standard bookshelf speakers, I would mount them on stands beside or jus behind the main viewing area. That's what I did in my living room that's open on one side.
I've heard a DefTech HT setup in a large showroom with the rear speakers mounted right up at the ceiling and this was a 12' ceiling height and the imaging to the rears in HT was still wicked.