Curious

gregure

Ok, this is just a curiosity question, as I'm obviously not rich, but assuming one had a shitload of money, would it be worth it to spend the extra $ on using tower speakers as your surround speakers, or would that just be a waste, given that you would have an excellent sub or two? In other words, does the signal output to surrounds even warrant using the bigger speakers, or are smaller bkshlf or bipole/dipole speakers plenty? Again, just curious to see opinions. Oh, and assume you would have the space to place 6 towers in your viewing room. Thanks.

AsSiMiLaTeD

One thing I know towers all around would be good for is multi channel music if that's your thing...

Otherwise, it couldn't hurt and I'm sure there is some gained benefit in the lower freq region by having towers back there and setting all to ''large"

Early B.

If I had the cash and the space, I would definitely have towered speakers as surrounds. Ideally, you want decent bass from every speaker, plus a sub or two for HT.

danger boy

I kind of expiremented with this a little bit a while back.

i had an extra pair of RT800i's. I hooked them up as the surrounds. and used another pair of 800i's as fronts. with a CS400i for center.

Although in theory it should have sounded awesome.. the fact was that having large towers in the rear did nothing at all. Surrounds for the most part as just not utilitzed that much for the "average" movie. Yes some like SPR is very good.. but that's only one movie out of thousands out on DVD.

Point is... the sound was very low and didn't utilize the size of the tower to give me any better sound than i was already getting from a pair of FX/300i's.

Like Polkmaniac said.. if you listen to alot of SACD's or DVD-a. then you do want 5 exact speakers and a big **** sub.

mantis

ok ,
the Ideal surround system would be all the same exact speaker all channels.But in the real world,

it's more about placement then that.Using timbre matched speakers is key.A subwoofer is nessary.

I wouldn't use tower design speakers for rears.Height is all wrong.Mounting on wall on sides and back wall is Ideal.The correcr height is cridical.

Dan

Emlyn

I also determined that full size tower speakers in the four corners of a large room (4 RTi150s in my case) were great for multi-channel music but not much else. For movies, they were not good because most movie surround sound effects are not meant to be directionally detected. The surround effects on 5.1 DVDs are meant to be ambient. Dipole speakers set above and slightly behind the seating area seemed to work far better to capture the mood of movies than tower speakers did. Rear effects speakers (for DTS-ES discrete movies) usually have a slightly different purpose so I use bipole speakers on the back wall. Very good for movies where things are supposed to seem like they're flying from behind and over one's head.

I eventually lost all interest in multi-channel music, so I no longer have four tower speakers incorporated into the home theater. I highly recommend any of Polk's FX speakers for home theater use.

gregure

As you can see from my setup, I'm already sold on the FX speakers, and I've really found them to be great performers. Like I said, I was just curious, if I ever had the money, if it was worthwhile to use towers instead of smaller speakers. I guess for HT the answer is a resounding no. Thanks again.

PolkWannabie

Originally posted by gregure
I guess for HT the answer is a resounding no.

For HT, I would think the answer depending on the towers would be a resounding YES.

danger boy

yeah.. does anyone with RTi150's want to hang them on the wall as surrounds? LOL :eek: so you can tell us how it sounds?

PolkWannabie

Wall ? ... no more so on the sides or in the rear than in the front.

kingkip

I love my towers for the rear. I have found the sound on multichannel music and HT to be very enveloping. Plus they look cool if you have the room.:cool: