Position or performance enclosure?

Barnestormer

Greetings and Salutations;

Newbie here. Replacing existing home theater with Polk. Going with 7.1 surround and have LC265i in the font with performance enclousures. For the rear surrounds, I'm using LC65s and am debating if to use the enclosures. These are going in ceiling due to room shape and can be positioned slightly behind the listener WITHOUT the enclosure, but are forced to slightly in front of the listener if USING the enclosure. I am thinking that position wins out and with 7.1 it is more vital to get the rear surrounds truely in the rear. But at the same time don't want the tonal quality to be sharply different.

Opinions?

Thanks much,
Eric

hockeyboy

Welcome to the forum Barnestormer and congrats on your first post! This forum will get you hooked and many of these guys really have great advice. In fact, I hooked up my first awesome HT, basically on the backs of the advisors I found on this forum.

As to your question, my advice is to definitely USE the enclosures. There is no debate IMO. The sound quality is going to suffer without the enclosure, and unless you have a huge room you will tell little difference with the placement and can probably compensate for that difference by calibration.

hockeyboy

Hey! I just noticed that was my 69th post. I am officially a sexy polkie now.

Barnestormer

Thanks for the reply....I spent about 4-5 hours all morning on the forums, searching and reading (there is some very funny humor here) and this is what I came up with: Don't use the Polk performance enclosure, but rather, build my own to fit the placement I want. I have the space in the ceiling to acheive the same volume, just not in the same dimensions. So it will take a little more time to get to actually hear these speakers at work, but I know over the long hual, I'll be much happier.

Thanks again for the 'sexy' reply.

Eric

hockeyboy

LOL- All I know is that without an enclosure the ceiling eats all of the sound. I have heard of people just packing the area big time with blown insulation first...

halc

How about a situation where the wall cavity is blown with closed cell foam for sound insulation? How much foam should be removed when the LC65i (or LC265i) is installed.

Barnestormer

I've been in touch with Polk engineering and both the LC265 and LC65 require 1 cubic foot of volume inside the enclosure. For best performance build a suitable enclosure and move enough insultation to be able to install it. Then install the speaker into the enclosure....
HTH