Anyone used STA's Front+Rear for HT

ben62670

I was thinking if the sound stage is that good 2 channel with the speakers diapering, it might be awesome for all four corners of HT?
Has anyone tried it?
Thanks Ben


Typo on post SDA's

BobMcG

Yes, a number of members have full SDA HTs.

ben62670

Would it be worth upgrading my RTA15tl's rear channels to an SDA of some sort?
I have SDA2's on the way.

Larry Chanin

ben62670 wrote:

I was thinking if the sound stage is that good 2 channel with the speakers diapering, it might be awesome for all four corners of HT?
Has anyone tried it?
Thanks Ben


Typo on post SDA's

Hi Ben,

I've got SDA-1Cs in the front, and I'm using a pair of SDA CRS+ as centers in a dedicated home theater. I'm concealing all my speakers (I use a total of 11 speaker including the subwoofers). Due to the size of SDAs I found it would be rather difficult to conceal them in the surround channels. I also think for my setup dipoles are better suited for the side surrounds anyway.

I'm using f/x500is for the side surrounds and LC265i In-Walls for my surround back channels.

If you're interested, click on the link in my signature.

Larry

ben62670

Very nice. Very nice indeed. Someone spent a lot of time designing that setup. Was it you! What cad program did you use to draw that up. That also is Very nice!
Ben

riglehart

What???... No concession stand??

riglehart

Hey, I was thinking about this a little. You have to be careful about Left/Right speaker placement on the rears, don't you? I would think you need to actually flip them so that the Right-Rear is actually the left SDA speaker.

Larry Chanin

ben62670 wrote:

Very nice. Very nice indeed. Someone spent a lot of time designing that setup. Was it you! What cad program did you use to draw that up. That also is Very nice!
Ben

Hi Ben,

Thanks.

Yes, I did the design and most of the installation. When my wife and I moved down to Florida we picked out a home with a floor plan that would accommodate a home theater. We also made sure our builder would accept significant structural changes to the standard floor plan.

The original plan had a guest bedroom adjacent to a large study. I had the builder eliminate the adjoining wall and all but one of the windows. I then provided the builder with specifications for the construction of the walls (6" thick staggered studs walls with insulation between the double sheetrock). I also designed the electrical and multi-zone lighting system. The builder finished the shell of the room per my specs and I finished the interior, installing the acoustic treatments, screen wall and shadowbox, stage seating and seating platform, equipment rack, wet bar, cabinets, etc.

I used Microsoft Visio to do the design drawings.

Larry

Larry Chanin

riglehart wrote:

What???... No concession stand??

Hi,

No, our theater is located on the first floor adjacent to the public spaces of the home. So we didn't have room for either a separate equipment room or a lobby. The best I could do was install a wet bar, with microwave and refrigerator.

Larry

Larry Chanin

riglehart wrote:

Hey, I was thinking about this a little. You have to be careful about Left/Right speaker placement on the rears, don't you? I would think you need to actually flip them so that the Right-Rear is actually the left SDA speaker.

I'm not sure about SDAs. I know that dipole speakers mounted on the rear wall need to be flipped in order for the drivers to remain in phase with the front speakers and to avoid cancellation between the drivers of each speaker that face toward the center of the room.

Larry

BMc

Larry Chanin wrote:

Hi Ben,

I've got SDA-1Cs in the front, and I'm using a pair of SDA CRS+ as centers in a dedicated home theater. I'm concealing all my speakers (I use a total of 11 speaker including the subwoofers). Due to the size of SDAs I found it would be rather difficult to conceal them in the surround channels. I also think for my setup dipoles are better suited for the side surrounds anyway.

I'm using f/x500is for the side surrounds and LC265i In-Walls for my surround back channels.

If you're interested, click on the link in my signature.

Larry

I have been admiring your vertically stacked CRS+ center channel speakers and have thought about doing something similar. Do you think I could wire a pair of CRS+ speakers to the same channel - in series or parallel? Wired in series the nominal impedance would drop to 3 ohms. If both CRS+ speakers were wired in parallel the nominal impedance would be 12 ohms.

schwarcw

I've got SDA-SRS 2.3's in the front and SDA-2's in the rear. The CSi40 with the solk tweeter provides a great timbre match for the RDO-194's in my SDA's. Sounds fantastic!

Larry Chanin

BMc wrote:

I have been admiring your vertically stacked CRS+ center channel speakers and have thought about doing something similar. Do you think I could wire a pair of CRS+ speakers to the same channel - in series or parallel? Wired in series the nominal impedance would drop to 3 ohms. If both CRS+ speakers were wired in parallel the nominal impedance would be 12 ohms.

Hi,

Thanks. Sorry for the delayed response. I was away for a few days.

I do not recommend wiring the CRS+s to the same amplifier channel, either in parallel or in series. What I do is I use a stereo amplifier of about 200 watts per channel and power each CRS+ from a separate dedicated channel. I use a "Y" splitter to split the line level center channel signal into two feeds and connect each feed to the right and left inputs of the amplifier. The speakers are then connected normally to the amplifiers right and left speaker terminals.

Here's a couple of threads on dual center channels that may interest you:

How's this for a center ch. solution

Dual Centers for Front Projection?

Adding 2nd Center Speaker?

Larry

DarqueKnight

BMc wrote:

Do you think I could wire a pair of CRS+ speakers to the same channel - in series or parallel? Wired in series the nominal impedance would drop to 3 ohms. If both CRS+ speakers were wired in parallel the nominal impedance would be 12 ohms.

You have it backwards. In series, the nominal impedances would add together to produce 12 ohms. In parallel, since the impedances are equal, the nominal impedance would be 3 ohms.

For the parallel wiring configuration, the positive terminal of each CRS+ would be connected to the speaker cable connected to the positive terminal of your amp and the negative terminal of each CRS+ would be connected to the speaker cable connected to the negative terminal of your amp.

For the series wiring configuration, the speaker cable from the positive terminal of your amp would be connected to the positive terminal of the first CRS+. A jumper wire would connect the negative terminal of the first CRS+ to the positive terminal of the second CRS+. The speaker cable from the negative terminal of your amp would then be connected to the negative terminal of the second CRS+.

I had the same concerns about using a 3 ohm center channel speaker back in 2002. I wanted to use a pair of CRS+'s as center channel speakers and run them off one channel of an Adcom GFA-5503 power amp (200 watts per channel, three channel). I sent emails to Adcom and Polk asking if there would be any problems with the 3 ohm parallel configuration. They both responded that there would be no problems as long as the amp was not overdriven. I ran my home theater in this configuration for a while, but I eventually sold the 5503 and replaced it with two GFA-5500 two channel amps: one to run the pair of CRS+'s and the other to run the front speakers.

Connecting the CRS+'s in series was not a viable option as the impedance was too high and caused the sound to be muffled.

Larry Chanin

ben62670 wrote:

Would it be worth upgrading my RTA15tl's rear channels to an SDA of some sort?
I have SDA2's on the way.

Hi Ben,

Getting back to your question, I guess it would depend on whether you were using SDAs in the rear because you were hoping to get the SDA effect (Interaural Crosstalk Cancellation) from your surrounds. If so, you might be disappointed.

If your have a conventional 5.1 setup with your "rear" channels mounted to the sides of the primary listening location, then regardless if you have the interconnect cable connected, you won't be able to hear any SDA effects.

If you have a 7.1 setup, in theory you might get SDA effects if your receiver/preamp produces stereo surround back channels, i.e. Lexicon's LOGIC7 processing or Dolby ProLogic IIx. However, our hearing is much less sensitive when listening to sound originating from the rear, and it might be difficult to hear the SDA effect.

Larry

Larry Chanin

DarqueKnight wrote:

I had the same concerns about using a 3 ohm center channel speaker back in 2002. I wanted to use a pair of CRS+'s as center channel speakers and run them off one channel of an Adcom GFA-5503 power amp (200 watts per channel, three channel). I sent emails to Adcom and Polk asking if there would be any problems with the 3 ohm parallel configuration. They both responded that there would be no problems as long as the amp was not overdriven. I ran my home theater in this configuration for a while, but I eventually sold the 5503 and replaced it with two GFA-5500 two channel amps: one to run the pair of CRS+'s and the other to run the front speakers.

Connecting the CRS+'s in series was not a viable option as the impedance was too high and caused the sound to be muffled.

Hi BMc,

As a followup to Raife's (DarqueKnight) excellent response, yes there are some amplifiers that are capable of handling 3 ohm loads. However, if you are contemplating using your Arcam receiver, that would be ill-advised because it is only rated to handle 4 ohm loads. Quoting from you receiver's manual:

Speaker impedance
Before connecting loudspeakers to your AVR300 you must set the impedance switch on the rear to the correct position (never adjust this switch with the power on or you may damage your speakers). If your loudspeakers are rated at 6Ω or lower set the switch to the 4Ω position; if your loudspeakers are rated higher than 6Ω, set the switch to the 8Ω position. This unit should only be used with loudspeakers with an impedance rating above 4Ω.

Note that failure to set this switch correctly for your speakers may cause the amplifier to shut down due to overheating.

Larry

BMc

Sorry I got off topic. That CRS+ center set up problem had been my mind for weeks. I would rather keep things simple and find a single center speaker I like than adding another 2 channel amp.

About the SDA rear speakers...Ben mentioned 4 corners so it must be a 5.1 HD set up. In that situation the surround SDA speakers should be mounted about 90degrees right and left of the listener. The channel separation (or SDA effect) of those speakers would be no better than a non-SDA surround speakers such as the RTA15TL.

RTA15TL surrounds should fine with the SDA 2 fronts. You could set them all to large and may not need a sub. I would at least replace all of the SL2000 tweeters in the SDA 2's. They could sound much brighter than the SL3000 tweeters in the RTA15TL's.

schwarcw

Check out this thread for using an RTi12 for a center. Looks pretty cool. I think it's post #11 Here

dudeinaroom

BMc wrote:

Sorry I got off topic. That CRS+ center set up problem had been my mind for weeks. I would rather keep things simple and find a single center speaker I like than adding another 2 channel amp.

About the SDA rear speakers...Ben mentioned 4 corners so it must be a 5.1 HD set up. In that situation the surround SDA speakers should be mounted about 90degrees right and left of the listener. The channel separation (or SDA effect) of those speakers would be no better than a non-SDA surround speakers such as the RTA15TL.

RTA15TL surrounds should fine with the SDA 2 fronts. You could set them all to large and may not need a sub. I would at least replace all of the SL2000 tweeters in the SDA 2's. They could sound much brighter than the SL3000 tweeters in the RTA15TL's.

I would set them all to large, and still use a sub for really low bass.When I had my ht set up, I had all of my speaker set to large, sda'2 up front, infinity sm-100 rears( 10" 2-ways) and 2 cheapy panasonic's and a 15" sub as centers. Sounded real nice for what it was all speaker were set to large, and sub set to none as the sub was fed off of the center channel, would have been real cool if I would have had an svs or the likes to run off the lfe.