How Many Speakers For A Home Theater System? [message #62480] |
Mon, 03 May 2010 12:06 |
Lancelot
Messages: 99 Registered: February 2010
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Viscount |
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I'm seeing 5 speakers on most home theater setups. Is that enough or adding more speakers will be much better? What is your recommendation on this? I'm also wondering if 2 subs is good to have, one infront and one at the back.
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Re: How Many Speakers For A Home Theater System? [message #63289 is a reply to message #63288] |
Wed, 30 June 2010 18:39 |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18783 Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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The left, right and center front speakers should all be the same. This is often difficult to do, since the front speakers have to be positioned at approximately the same height as the screen. That makes center speaker configuration and placement difficult. Some people use a horizontal array (woofer-tweeter-woofer laying side by side) or some similar arrangement and that's the worst possible thing you could do. If you are considering that, don't even use a center speaker, and go for a phantom center instead. That can be done with great success using the right speakers.
The surrounds don't have to be the same as the front speakers. In fact, I prefer speakers with a 90°x40° constant directivity pattern for the fronts, toed-in so the left/right speaker axes cross just in front of the listening position. The surrounds don't need to be done this way, since they are primarily for ambience. I prefer to have them beside the listeners and just behind them, pointing inward nearly straight inward, with just the slightest toe-in towards the listeners. They shouldn't be so much behind the listeners as beside them, and slightly above.
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Re: How Many Speakers For A Home Theater System? [message #63765 is a reply to message #63620] |
Mon, 09 August 2010 05:21 |
Adveser
Messages: 434 Registered: July 2009 Location: USA
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Illuminati (1st Degree) |
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candoon wrote on Mon, 02 August 2010 09:04 | Is there a large difference (sound wise) between speakers that sit flat (table top or the floor) compared to those which are hung? We tried this one just with the front ones and I could tell no difference myself.
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Floorstanding speakers are made to sit directly on the floor and good companies take that into consideration when designing them. Some companies put casters or whatever else they have on the bottom to prevent vibrations from refracting into the floor. I say if you have decent carpet not to worry about it, but you shouldn't put speakers flat on hard floors in my opinion.
Bookshelf speakers or monitors typically are put on stands, but anything will do so long is there is not a lot of vibration being transferred to something that resonates audible frequencies. I don't see any problem with a bookshelf sitting on two milk crates stacked on each other.
but remember. Tweeters need to be at eye/ear level. I can't tell you how pissed off I was when I realized how much I was coloring the sound (and correcting the color) just by being closer to the mid-range driver when I read about this and decided to put my 3" speakers directly on the floor.
Hanging anything but a floorstanding speaker doesn't produce any problems that I am aware of. What are you dealing with to hang it with, like a reverse stand? Chain? Rope? Whatever the answer, just make sure the hanging thing doesn't vibrate too much and feel the ceiling and make sure it is okay too.
http://adveser.webs.com/
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