speaker mixing

[gjertsen]

I presently have an Energy Take 5.2 sat/sub system for my home theater. For the second time in 3 years one of the sats has a blown driver, which I understand now to be endemic for these models. Though I may be able to get it repaired under warranty, I've been thinking about different speaker configurations and wondering if there were any problems with them.

For instance, I've read that keeping speakers in the same family/brand is important so the overal timbre is matched. How realistic a concern is this, really? Is this something that the average listener can even hear?

Also, like many consumers, I'd like not only good home theater but good music, and I was thinking about getting larger bookshelf speakers for my front left and right, and maybe leaving the back speakers the home theater satellites. Assuming I got the crossover stuff figured out with the subwoofer (I know my receiver lets me configure the size of the speakers), is their something fundamentally wrong with having bigger fronts than rears?

Thanks for all help!

 

[Leprkon]

timbre match across the front 3 is very important for HT. if you do alot of SACD or DVD-A, then they all need to be a reasonably close match.

adding larger fronts is fine, as long as the center matches them. in HT, only a small part of the sound goes to the rears, so they can be a little smaller and lower quality.

larger fronts also help for your two-channel music.