rear surrounds upgrade question

Phacoman

Hello all. Long time polkie here. New member on this forum though.

I've got a surround sound dilemma. I currently have a theater in one end of my large finished basement so the theater does NOT have a back wall. My current setup has RTi-A5 for front left and right, CSi-A6 center, Hsu stf2 sub, and two owm3 as surrounds. I have the owm3 mounted behind and to the side of the theater. I have one angle mounted from the side wall and the other angle mounted from a support column. I've been strongly considering upgrading the surrounds. Because of my wierd room, I feel limited.

I've been considering adding a pair of side surrounds to make the system a 7.1. They will have to be about 1 foot in front of the first row of seats so it wouldn't be perfectly 90 degrees off axis. This is because of a window and some french doors. I could use fxi-a4 but they might not be ideal due to position. I could use Rti-A1. I could also use another pair of owm3.

I'd like to hear what some of you guys would do here. Could I keep the rear owm3 and get a pair of something else as side surrounds? Would you scrap the owm3 and get 2 pairs of something else? Would you just get another pair of owm3? I'd prefer to keep the owm3 because they are mounted and angled well but I'm flexible.

Help! I've been debating this decision for quite awhile now.

kuntasensei

I have my side surrounds slightly in front of my seating area as well, primarily because it helped blend them with the mains for sidewall pans. I don't see why another pair of OWM3s wouldn't work fine.

You're gonna have a lot of people tell you to stick with 5.1. Personally, I love having the rear surrounds and I think it really helps with precise placement of sounds in the surrounds. First and foremost, however, you should look at dolby.com's guidelines for 7.1 speaker placement. If you can't put the rear speakers at the proper angles, it might be best to just stick with 5.1.

Phacoman

Basically, where my rear owm3 are right now places them at a 135 degree angle in relation to the viewing axis of the primary seating location. They are about 11-12 ft from the primary seat which is a berkline with a rather high back which further blocks sound from the posterior. In the front row, you don't get much surround effect from those little owm3...however, the back row is much closer to them and at a better surround angle, so they do get a nice effect. I tested this last night by sitting in a bunch of different seats in my theater.

So, I feel that I need to add side surrounds for the front row to enjoy the effects also. For 7.1, the rears should be from 135-155 degree angle which I already have. The sides should be close to 90. Mine will be about 80 degrees because they are 1 ft in front of the front seating row but I think that should be close enough to 90 to work okay. I guess I could try another pair of owm3 and save a few bucks but if I feel they're too weak (especially on the low end) I could then dump them and upgrade. I just wonder if it would sound okay to have owm3 in the rear and something like RTi-A1 or fxi-A4 for the sides.

kevhed72

In a 7.1 system, the OWM speakers should be fine as the rear surrounds, and it sounds like your room is pretty big....so I would use the RTi's on the sides also. Honestly, play around with different options / palcements with the speakers you have now, before deciding to go out and purchase other speakers. It sometimes takes quite awhile to figure out what works best for your specific room. Also, do you have a diagram of the room to post here?

Phacoman

I will work on getting the diagram up here. I'm sure that would certainly help with the visualization much better than my verbal descriptions.