Mic Position with Loveseat – How To Run Your Room Correction
In my first real home theater, I had a loveseat as my main couch. My wife and I could sit side-by-side and snuggle while watching movies. There was no arm separating us. Both of the seats reclined so I felt like it was the best of both worlds. We had home theater recliners but it was still more like a traditional couch. After setting up the room, I realized my first problem. There was no “main seat.” Most home theater guides have you calibrate your room correction and place your speakers based on the main seat in your room. This is the seat directly in front of the center speaker. With a loveseat, there is no main seat. The main seat is the center of the loveseat. So how do you run your room correction with a loveseat? Let’s discuss!
Mic Position is Not About Your Butt
When you run your room correction, you’ll often see a graphic on the screen that looks like this:
Clearly, this is showing you you place your mic in very specific seats in your home theater. But, as we’ve explained, that picture isn’t actually what they want you to do. In short, you aren’t really measuring where you are seated as much as how your speakers perform in the space. In the case of a loveseat, you wouldn’t measure from the side of the couch that you sit on. Rather, you should measure from the center of the couch. This is assuming that the loveseat is centered on your TV.
Should You Move Your Loveseat?
Many times, only one person in a household will really care about the audio. That’s certainly true in my house. Not only am I the only person that cares, I’m the only person that notices! If I’m the one that cares, should I center my seat so that I am dead center on the TV or center speaker so that I get the best audio experience?
You could. In smaller spaces, it will make a noticeable difference. That way, you could run your room correction with the microphone directly on your half of the loveseat. Often, however, moving the loveseat to one side creates issues. The most glaring one is aesthetics. Having the loveseat off-center to the TV will look off and often be met with resistance.
In most rooms, in most situations, sitting slightly off-center won’t appreciably affect your audio experience. In these cases, we’d recommend running your room correction with the microphone at the center of your loveseat and trying it out. If you feel the audio is dramatically affected, it likely isn’t the position of your seat, but your room acoustics or speaker locations. Address your room acoustics and try moving your surround speakers (these are usually the problem) a bit farther away. This should help create a more even audio experience across both seats on your loveseat.
