confused myself regarding backs and sides

TonyR

I have a yamaha rx z9 receiver, rti 10 fronts csi 4 center, two psw 12's. Currently my sides are two more rti 10's and my backs are rti 6's. Is that the correct configuration?
Tony

kawizx9r

I've never messed around with a 7.1 config but I assumed the rears had more of an audio soundtrack as opposed to the sides. I would put the other pair of rti10's as rear duty and rti6's as side duty, or even better a pair of F/X dipole/bipole speakers for sides.

Zeros

I may be wrong as well, but I always thought that you want your better speakers as the sides. My thinking is because if whatever you are watching is only in 5.1 the rear two channels will go to your side speakers, not the rears. I'm sure someone will come in here and correct us though.

apphd

Zeros wrote: »

I may be wrong as well, but I always thought that you want your better speakers as the sides. My thinking is because if whatever you are watching is only in 5.1 the rear two channels will go to your side speakers, not the rears. I'm sure someone will come in here and correct us though.

I hope others will as well, I agree that the sides should be the more capable of the speakers. But it is my understanding that the newer processing formats such as Dolby PLXII, THX Ultra2/THX Surround EX etc. would take 5.1 content and matrix the side ch. info to the rear surounds. I guess I'm going to have to get around to trying out 7.1 to make sure I understand it all better.

sTiLlLeArNiNg

i assumed the setup would be to have the smaller speakers as the rear surrounds so that's how i have mine setup? unforunately i haven't powered everything up yet (due to other reasons)

will hopefully have everything up and running by the end of the week if everything goes as planned

wutadumsn23

I ran 7.1 for awhile, and in my experience the surround backs seemed to put out more sound than the sides. I would go with the suggestion to put the better speakers in the rear and use the lesser speakers as your sides. Best way to find out is to try the speakers in both configurations and see which setup works best. You may not be able to hear much of a difference at all, or it may be night and day, but best way is to try it and which one, if either, performs best. As for apphd's suggestion about the matrixing, that is true to the best of my knowledge, but from what I hear the whole matrixing deal is overrated. Welcome to the club!!

-Jeff

megasat16

Your speakers setup looks OK to me. But you need to play with speaker position for using the RTi speakers as side and rear surrounds. Surrounds are ideally best suited for diffused sounds and RTi10 and RTi8 are not designed for surround duty. You can surely use them as surrounds. I used LSi15 as rear surround and it works well. I just had to play the speaker position a bit to get it right. I am sure you'll figure it out.

For physical location of the speakers, the side surrounds should ideally be on the sides from your seating positions and the rear surrounds are at least 3-5ft behind your seating positions.

comfortablycurt

The "side" surrounds are what carry most of the soundtrack as far the rear soundstage goes. The side surrounds are the standard 5.1 surround sound speakers...The surround backs are what's added to make it 7.1.

The vast majority of the time there should be more information coming from the sides than the backs. I'd use the 10's as sides, and the 6's as backs. So, you've got it right.