question about wattage?

A number of people run an all tower surround system here. It will put a bit more strain on your AVR but there is NO reason to not do this. And yes the AVR provides equal sound to all channels or as much as each needs, if you have 60s back there they will receive the same wattage as the fronts. However there is less INFO back there so don't expect them to sound like your fronts.

cnh

A speaker is only going to draw as much power as it needs at any given time...it's not as if each channel is receiving 100 watts(for instance) at all times. Most of the time, each channel is probably using no more than 2-3 watts at any given time.

Running towers as surrounds is definitely "better", but the improvements are going to be minimal IMO. Surround speakers generally carry much less information than the other speakers. The center channel carries roughly 50% of the soundtrack, and nearly all the dialogue, and the front L/R carry nearly the entire musical score. The surround speakers are more or less for ambient sound effects, and don't place anywhere near as much of a demand on your amp of the front L/C/R. If the surround channels need to tap into that power though, it will be there on demand.


In an ideal situation, a HT setup would use the exact same speakers in every position. Most people can't accommodate a setup like that though, so dedicated(horizontal) center channels were born. This is the same reason that most people will use smaller bookshelves as surrounds.

It doesn't mix it "equally"...that would be all channel stereo, where all the speakers are playing the exact same thing.

What NEO does, is take a stereo source, and convert it into surround sound. It matrixes in the surround effects. It's not as if all the speakers are playing the same signal. That wouldn't even be surround sound...it would just be a mess of noise.

Dolby ProLogic does the same thing. It takes any 2 channel source, and matrixes the center/surrounds into the mix.

Curt already summed it up pretty well when he said a speaker will only send as many watts as needed to a speaker to produce a sound at a certain volume. If you have helicopters warming up in front of you on the screen, most of this sound will come from the front three (L/C/R) because that's 'where' the helos are firing up. More volume means more watts are needed to produce the sound. You may have some 'ambience' sound coming from the surrounds. But those helos are going to be louder than anything else, so more watts.

Special surround modes won't adjust all volumes equally. So you won't hear the helos all around you. They will still sound like they are coming from up front. So still more watts to those speakers.

One important aspect of surround sound is directionality. In FPS games, you are usually moving toward some objective. And all the interesting stuff is usually happening on screen, in front of you, drawing you on. So that's where the majority of the sound usually comes from. There's nothing preventing a sound designer from using all channels equally. And sometimes they do use the surrounds very effectively, basically having things attacking you from all over. But to play the whole game this way would be very disorienting as you'd just be spinning around the whole time shooting things with nothing in front of you to drive you forward in the game.

With music, it's the same thing. They can put you in the audience, a few rows back, which would still have most of the sound in front of you. Or they could drop you into the middle of the stage or orchestra pit. But that's not how most people listen to a show.

Exactly. Depending on the movie...the surround speakers will be active for a total of 2-3 minutes out of a 2 hour movie. IMO, it's not worth it to stretch your budget to put towers in back. Especially if that means sacrificing a little bit elsewhere in your rig.

Definitely. In faster paced action movies, the surrounds will be getting a lot of usage.

In many movies though, that are more storyline based, the surrounds will hardly see any use at all.

Either way though, a competent pair of bookshelves will easily be able to carry a surround channels sound track. Floorstanders are better...but if it means skimping on other aspects of your system, you're better off going with smaller bookshelves.

As I said above, in an ideal scenario, each channel will use an identical speaker...but in most situations, it simply isn't practical.