Help I'm Confused!!

[Nat]

I'm swamped with advise and everyone's different! Have a Pro logic Harmon Kardon AVR 20 receiver and am looking to come into the 21 century with 7.1 (perhaps HK again or perhaps dennon). I have a 5 speakers and a sub and my "rear" speakers are jamo dipole jobs that sit on the wall parallel to the couch as originally and professionally installed. SO, in order to go to the 7.1 system; 1/2 the "audio advisors" say the dipoles can be used but have to be moved closer to the bigscreen (HOW close they never say). The other 1/2 say that the jamo dipoles have to be scrapped and the "rear and rear centers" should match. Some say that ALL speakers need to match. Some say that the "rear centers" are merely for "fill". HELP! For a reasonable intelligent professional male who has survived 57 years in Florida and has gotten more "sound advise" then I need - is there anyone out there who can help me thru this maze? Post back here or e mail to natchman@aol.com thanks in advance!

 

[mtrycrafts]

I'm swamped with advise and everyone's different! Have a Pro logic Harmon Kardon AVR 20 receiver and am looking to come into the 21 century with 7.1 (perhaps HK again or perhaps dennon). I have a 5 speakers and a sub and my "rear" speakers are jamo dipole jobs that sit on the wall parallel to the couch as originally and professionally installed. SO, in order to go to the 7.1 system; 1/2 the "audio advisors" say the dipoles can be used but have to be moved closer to the bigscreen (HOW close they never say). The other 1/2 say that the jamo dipoles have to be scrapped and the "rear and rear centers" should match. Some say that ALL speakers need to match. Some say that the "rear centers" are merely for "fill". HELP! For a reasonable intelligent professional male who has survived 57 years in Florida and has gotten more "sound advise" then I need - is there anyone out there who can help me thru this maze? Post back here or e mail to natchman@aol.com thanks in advance!

Well, either way you go, you need speakers for the rear center channel, right? You can either match the current surrounds you have in which case the rears will match, or get something else in which case you 'may' want to later replace the rear sides. Then, you temporarily wire the rear center and try it out. If you like it, wire permanently You can go on from that experiment.
The sides should be left where they are in either case. Yes, the rear center is a fill in but it is a very large space that it fills in and the DVDs witht hat rear channel will be so much better witht he whole rear hemisphere filled.
In the end, you can do it in steps and experiment.

 

[Leprkon]

the front three should match. end of that discussion.

the sides should match each other. they do not need to match the fronts. end of that discussion.

if the rears should match each other. they do not need to match either the fronts or the sides. unlike the front, rear sound movement is less critical to match the screen. why ? your ears are much more attuned to hearing from the front. you can generalize behind you left and behind you right but you can't really localize. so if there's minor interruption due to a mismatch in timbre, it will occur in the area your hearing is least sensitive. you will never know it, unless you keep turning your head to follow the sound or unless there are bird noises in the rear channels and your cats are hungry..

keep in mind, all this applies FOR HOME THEATER ONLY !!!

if you are running SACD or DVD-audio, you will get the very best results by using seven identical speakers.

 

[Nat]

Thanks for the reply - The fronts and sides (rears) are all Jamo and do match although I don't know what timber (re) matching means. I do also listen to cd's which is why I wanted to make sure i was doing the right thing

 

[tbewick]

You should note that dipoles are not recommended for listening to multi-channel music, at least according to my Denon AV manual. If this isn't a concern, I'd suggest you try contacting Jamo and ask them what rear-centres they'd recommend to go with your existing speakers. When you upgrade to a 7.1 amplifier, the manual provided should tell you how to correctly configure your speakers.

Also, I did read somewhere else, maybe on Audioholics, that you should try to have all your speakers equidistant from your centre seating position, and not rely on the amp's speaker delay function.