Surround Speakers (1 Viewer)

[Dave H.]

Hi, This is my first time at this so bare with me! My main interest is music and I recently remodeled our basement and built a nice listening room. We soundproofed the room using soundboard and resilient channel and it came out great. I went ahead and ran speaker wire so that maybe we could try home theater some day. Well that day has come, My question is do I really have to match all of the speakers? I have a nice pair of Krix front speakers and I have read that the most important speaker in a surround system is the center speaker.Can I get away with buying a really nice center speaker and scale down(price wise) on the surrounds? I think the real reason Im asking this is that I really want to upgrade my two channel system! I just know that when I hook up a 6.1 system Im going to want more and more,you all know how us audiophiles and videophiles are!! Anyway if anyone could share there wisdom I would appreciate it. Thanks, Dave H.

 

[John S]

Well, the answer is no. But I am one the really subscribes to the exact same speaker in all locations.

But I have heard excellent systems, all matched, partially matched, and even not matched at all. The same speaker in every location just seems to make a good calibration easier.

 

[Charlie Campisi]

Well, if you are going to go with non-matched speakers, make sure you listen to them in your system to see how well they integrate. The most important thing, imo, is that when an effect passes from one speaker to the next (as a car moves from L to C to R across the front, or a plane flies from the front to rear) that the sounds match. Otherwise, your ears will focus on the change in "pitch" or "tone" as the effect moves from one speaker to the next and you'd be aware of the separate speakers, be distracted from the movie, etc. That would be really distracting and ruin the experience for me.

 

[Dave H.]

Thanks guys for your comments on my question. Speaker matching has never been explained to me. Charlie your explanation makes perfect sense to me now. Time to go speaker shopping! Im thinking of energy act 6 series or infinity TSS750 series, what do you think? Thanks again, Dave H.