Surround Speaker Placement in a Loft

Berzerker
Berzerker Posts: 15
edited January 2008 in Speakers
Hello and thanks in advance for your input:

Made a few new component purchases (Pioneer Elite VSX-94TXH, Elite BDP-95FD, all new Blue Jeans interconnects) and have decided to prioritize getting my surround speakers installed in the new home. Have some room size and surround size/type questions before I run conduit and mount speakers.

My surrounds are RT15i. Budget was tight 7 years ago when I bought my speaker set-up and the surrounds had to suffer. Looking to upgrade if necessary.

My speaker setup:

RT800i - Front (bi-amped)
CS400i - Center
RT15i - Surround
Velodyne - HGS-12

The Room (main room in loft)

Height - 12ft
Width - 17ft
Length - 40ft

The listening area is continuous with the main room and the listening position is at about 11.5ft (9ft from center channel). One side wall is full length/height brick the other wall seperates the main room from the bedrooms, forms the alcove for the kitchen, etc. and is only 8.5 ft tall. The farthest back I can mount the surrounds on this side wall (before kitchen alcove) is 14ft.

Regarding dipole/bipole (f/x 500i if I can find them), since the there will be about 25ft behind the surrounds before the rear wall (basically open space) will I benefit at from the difraction?

If I stick with direct radiating, should I upgrade to something like RT35i (if I can find them).

Any suggestions for more recent Polk models that would match the fronts/center well?

Thanks much,

Mike