In regards to the speaker wire: yes, the LOWER the AWG (American Wire Gauge) number, the thicker the wire. So 12 AWG is thicker than 14 AWG, which is thicker than 16 AWG. Basically, the longer the length of wire, the thicker it should be in order to keep resistance to a minimum. My own personal rule of thumb is to use 12 AWG for any length greater than 40 feet, 14 AWG for any length in the range of 20-40 feet, and 16 AWG is fine for under 20 feet, although I tend to use 14 AWG at the minimum. Speaker wire is cheap
Monoprice has in-wall rated speaker wire - it's got the white outer jacket and then red and black leads inside. And they sell the wall plates, speaker binding post wall plate inserts, and banana plugs. So you can just get everything you need from them.
For connecting two subwoofers, you simply split the subwoofer output on your Receiver using a Y-splitter. Subwoofer cable is just RCA coax cable. Nothing fancy
It's nice to keep the timbre and overall sound quality of all 5 or 7 speakers similar. I consider it vital for the front 3 speakers to have identical sound quality. When a sound pans across the front sound stage, you don't want it sounding different as it moves from Left to Center to Right, or vice versa. It should create the illusion of a real object simply moving across the front of your room. Easier said than done! But it's great when the effect is done perfectly, so your front 3 speakers need to sound exactly the same in order for that to happen.
The surround and surround back speakers are not quite as vital. I still prefer it when it sounds like a real object is simply panning around me to the sides or back, or flying directly overhead. And in order for that to happen, the front 3 speakers and the surrounds need to all sound identical. But the primary job of the surround and surround back speakers is to create ambience and to "blanket" the audience. So it isn't quite so vital that they perfectly match the front 3. Still, I certainly much prefer it when they're at least a pretty close match.
I also happen to favor diffuse surround speakers. This is actually what
THX recommends. THX recommends di-pole surround speakers with regular monopole surround back speakers.
I actually prefer bi-pole surround speakers.
When you go to a full-sized movie theater, you'll notice there are lots of speakers on the side and back walls. All of the speakers on the side wall play the exact same thing. This actually leads to a lot of sound wave interaction. In a big movie theater, this has the effect of making everything coming from the side walls sound very diffuse and difficult to pin-point.
Di-pole speakers mimick this effect rather well. In a di-pole speaker, you basically have two speakers in one cabinet, with one side firing at an angle towards the front of the room, and the other side firing at an angle towards the back of the room. And in a di-pole, the two sides are out of phase, meaning that when the front side moves outward, the back side movies inward, and vice versa. This out of phase movement creates a ton of sound wave interference, similar to the multiple speakers on the side walls of a full-sized movie theater. So you get a very "fuzzy" and indistinct sound from di-pole surround speakers.
I prefer bi-pole surround speakers. Bi-pole speakers have a very similar look - essentially two speakers in one box with one side angled toward the front of the room, and the other side angled toward the back of the room. But in a bi-pole, both sides fire in phase. So both sides move outward at the same time, and inward at the same time. This basically just creates a speaker with exceptionally wide dispersion. I happen to really prefer that sound. It does a better job of "blanketing" and enveloping the audience in a home theater - especially if you have more than one row of seating - but it does so without sounding "fuzzy" and indistinct.
For the surround back speakers on the back wall, I always just use regular monopole speakers. And you can certainly still use regular monopole speakers in the surround positions as well. Virtually all mixing booths and multi-channel studios just use monopole speakers in all the positions. But that's a little bit misleading. When the engineers and mixers are making adjustments to the recording, they're listening for the utmost in details. They want to hear every change they make. They want things to stick out like a sore thumb. But when it's time for actual playback in a home setting, things are not supposed to stick out the way they do in a studio. The studio is a bit like seeing things under a microscope. But never-the-less, you can certainly use regular monopole speakers as your surrounds. So that's the very long way of saying that, yes, you can use the same model of speaker for both the surrounds and the surround backs
But I happen to prefer using bi-pole speakers for the surrounds, and regular monopole speakers for the surround backs.
The Focal Chorus 800 series speakers are quite a large improvement over the Polk RTi speakers and the Infinity Primus. The accessories4less prices ARE a very good deal. That's why people around here are so excited about them!
I'm not a Polk fan at all. Simply put, almost everyone who buys Polk speakers gets them as their first big upgrade over a HTiB or TV speakers, but then winds up upgrading from the Polks. They're not terrible, but there's just a lot of detail and sound stage depth missing from them. I find, at least.
The Infinity Primus are great entry-level speakers. But the Focal Chorus are considerably more refined. That said, my love of Focal is really mostly for their Electra series, and I am really smitten with their Beryllium tweeters. VERY expensive stuff, the Electra Be series, though
The less expensive Chorus 700 have a bit of coloration, I found. Pretty sure most of it comes from the cabinets of the speakers themselves, which aren't exactly inert. The Chorus 800 series are very good. I find them a teeny bit etched on the high end. Like there's just a touch of "bite" to high pitched sounds. And I find the Chorus 800 towers to have a bit of "bloom" in the lower mid-bass. In other words, I wouldn't call them brutally neutral speakers. They have a bit of character to them. But all the sound is there. There's no detail missing the way I find the Polks to sound. And there's no sense of any portion of the sound nearing the verge of getting a bit out of control the way the Infinity Primus speakers sound. But they are not clinically accurate speakers, either.
So that's why I think it's important for you to audition a number of other brands. It's not to necessarily hear the Focal Chrous 800 speakers in person. That would be great, but it's not entirely necessary. It's more for you to simply experience hearing several "good", but different sounding speakers. You'll discover that you prefer certain sound characteristics to others. If you listen to Klipsch, Paradigm, Pioneer, and Martin Logan - and you happen to really love one of them over the others - we'll be able to tell from that what sort of sound characteristics you really prefer
