Side & rear surrounds...different from mains?

[pearsall001]

I've read conflicting points of view about the importance of matching all speakers in a HT setup. Then on the other hand others say that as long as the front end is timbre matched that you can get away with speakers from another manuf for the side & rear surrounds. I currently have a KEF front end with Polk LSi/FX side surrounds. The package sounds awesome but I'm wondering if I'm missing out by not using the matching KEF Q800S surrounds. Thoughts.

 

[Impelled]

When the speakers signature matches, panning sounds have the same sound and volume as they move past you.
If the speakers arent a good match, the sound and volume (differing with frequency) will change.

You most likely are missing out on something, but it depends how well what you have matches.

 

[JJMP50]

IMHO you aren't missing a lot unless you listen to a lot of multichannel music. As you can see in my sig, I'm using Monitor Audios for mains and JBL's for surrounds. Movies sound great and when I listen to music, I use 2 channel mode exclusively (unless its just for background at low volume).