[brj]

For those of you that have your main rig in a living room with a fireplace located between your speakers, how did you arrange your gear?

I was looking at a house the other day that had a nice large living room (14' wide x maybe 15' tall at ridge beam x maybe 30' long), but the natural speaker positions to fire down the long axis of the room would be located to either side of the fireplace.  The speakers themselves would be fine, but placing a rack in front of the fireplace is out of the question due to heat and access concerns.  The only options that looked feasible were to place the gear off to one side or perhaps behind one speaker.  Either way, it appears that you'd have to run wires in front of the fireplace (unless you can route them under the floor or through a wall), and will be faced with some longer runs.

It also looks like your amp selection (monoblocs placed behind each individual speaker vs. single-chassis amps) would dictate whether you have long speaker cables vs. long interconnects.

I've seen this issue in many homes, so I have to image that others are dealing with it.  Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

Thanks!

[macrojack]

I've been there and I never really solved it until I moved the whole rig to the basement. That helped but changing houses is what was required to fix it. The worst for me with monoblocks was having AC available on only one side of the fireplace.

[TomW16]

Depending on what your fireplace mantle is made of, you may be able to fish wire through the mantle (assuming that it is hollow) so that wires are not visible in front of the fireplace.  I did this when the equipment was in built-in book shelves that flanked the fireplace.  I should note, however, that this is not my main set up.

Depending on the drive capabilities of your preamp, the safer bet is to use long speaker cables and shorter interconnects.  It is doubtful that the the slight electrical parameter differences from having one speaker cable longer than another would be audible.

Good luck!

Tom

[pardales]

I have that set-up (fireplace in between the speakers). I put my equipment rack in the next room and ran the speaker wire under the floor. It worked out nice in my situation because the area where I run my speaker wire was through an unifinished part of the basement -- so I had easy access. You can see some pictures of my set-up at Audiogon in my system thread, same username as here. 

[stereocilia]

I abandoned the speaker flanking the fireplace because my fireplace is off-center, so I didn't have enough space to keep one speaker away from the wall or, more importantly, the fire.  I my case, I have no regrets placing the system 90 degrees from the FP because I can more freely fiddle with placement -- just a thought.

[brj]

Thanks for the comments, guys.  In my case, the question is still theoretical as I'm actively looking for a house.  I'm asking because I never look at a living area without considering how an audio system would integrate, and the fireplace issue seems to be surprisingly common.  I've seen plenty of off-center fireplaces as well, and can see why that would be unattractive.  (For the room I described, however, the fireplace is centered on the short wall.)  In most cases, however, rotating the configuration wouldn't be attractive either, as it would typically force you to sit against the back wall.

[brj]

Ok, mortgage rates have been climbing fast for the past month, so the longer I wait for that "perfect" house, the cheaper it would have to be... a situation that seems unlikely.  As a result, I'm starting to consider one particular house that does have the fireplace in the middle of the living room, but am still left wondering how to deal with the gear.

Here are a couple of shots of a different house having the same floor plan, but vacant and thus easier to visualize.  (The only real difference is that the house I'm actually contemplating has a fake rock fireplace that is wider and otherwise more massive than the brick one shown here.)  To give you a sense of scale, the room is roughly 14.5 feet wide and the peak sits at roughly 15 feet.





So, anyone else have a situation like this that they worked around in a reasonable fashion?  I'd have plenty of depth to pull the speakers out into the room (although I have to pay attention to the double doors out to the deck), but the gear itself would have to be shoved back to the side somehow, and possibly split left and right of the fireplace.  The other option is to place the gear on the side wall and have really long speaker cables.

Then again, the house has a semi-finished basement, so maybe that becomes the listening room at some point.  It is just a smaller room, and would thus require more treatment.  (Of course, it is much easier to physically get at an 8 foot ceiling to treat it than to get to a ridge beam 15 feet in the air!)

(Of course, looking at these pictures again, I realize that I wouldn't be able to treat those corners without blocking the windows.  Oops.)

[Housteau]

I don't see any real issue there.  There is nothing wrong with placing your gear against the right side wall and running speaker cables that would be a bit longer.  It does not appear to look like it would be a very long run at all.  Even an 18' - 20' length for speaker cables is quite reasonable.

The fireplace itself will add some interesting diffusion.  I would add in there some tall artificial plants flanking it, along with a removeable absorptive panel for the center opening.