Is there such a thing... centre speaker woes

[Tuna]

I'm thinking of putting a projector screen in our living room that will come down in front of a pair french doors. The problem is speaker placement. Obviously I can put left and right channels either side of the doors, and sub in pretty much any position. But just where the centre speaker should be, there's nothing but doorway.

So is there a solution? Ceiling speakers that can bounce the sound off the wall or screen? Or something else?

[Ultra Violent]

45deg ceiling speaker.

[LaSarthe+Back]

What screen is it?

[IntegraTypeR]

I have exactly the same problem at the moment. Have re-arranged the room from an earlier layout based on a crt tv so already have an existing centre channel (monitor audio silver rs lcr). I'm going to stick it on a table in front of the doors whenever I use it which isn't ideal!

[OldSkoolRS]

Moving the centre out to watch a film only takes a minute (make sure you leave a long enough cable to do this though), but if that's too much hassle the other option is not to have a centre speaker and use a 'phantom' centre instead. The amp should allow this setting, though it does have side effects: Anyone listening off centre will find that dialogue shifts towards which whichever speaker they are nearest. There was also some debate on AVForums as to whether some bass gets lost using this setting (can't remember the technical ins and outs but it seemed to make sense at the time).

When I watch a film on my PJ it takes me about 15 minutes setting up beforehand, despite all my speakers already being in the perfect 7.1 layout: The reason is that my living room (like many) is very light in wall colour and ceiling. Despite the good contrast ratio of my JVC HD350 it is largely lost due to reflections around the room. As I wouldn't want (nor would the OH allow ) to paint the whole room dark, I've made up a temporary 'tent' using 25mm dowels that slot into the pelmet where my screen is hiden. This gives me a black cloth surround to the image on the top and sides out to 1x screen width in depth With this in place the picture looks fantastic and has so much depth to the image. My point being that to have a PJ in a living room there are compromises and/or effort required to really get the most out of the expensive purchase....I'd really like a proper dedicated room with black or dark grey walls and ceiling, but it isn't going to happen this side of a lottery win.

Edited by OldSkoolRS on Saturday 26th September 14:47