does SS speaker quality matter?

[ixlegitballinxl]

looking to upgrade my home theater yet again...I currently have klipsch 52c and 52rf... and for the side/rears some older hkts 18's. It sounds nice, but i want to upgrade the side/rear speakers. klipsch recommends the rb 42's for SS when using other 52 speakers. but for my room setup, they are too big and bulky.....I've seen alot of threads saying that the side/rear speakers aren't really important when it comes to price/quality. is this true? and if so or not....... any recommendations?

Thanks in advance for any insight

[musicman1999]

Those people would be wrong, any chain is only as good as it's weakest link. A lot of info comes from those speakers and they should at least timbre match your fronts, so if you have Klipsch, buy some from the same series as your fronts, sorry i have only heard a couple of their models so i can't recommend anything but i would think there would be a matching bookshelf.

bill

[wem003]

I loved the sound of my fronts and only had one crossover setting on my older Onkyo 702 - so I got the same speakers for the rear. Probably overkill, but for music and concert video - it was worth it for me.

[Slec]

Originally Posted by musicman1999

Those people would be wrong, any chain is only as good as it's weakest link. A lot of info comes from those speakers and they should at least timbre match your fronts, so if you have Klipsch, buy some from the same series as your fronts, sorry i have only heard a couple of their models so i can't recommend anything but i would think there would be a matching bookshelf.

bill

I'm not disagreeing, just asking a question...

The surrounds, and especially rear surrounds, don't handle the load and therefore don't require the same types of frequency response as the fronts and center...right?

I would personally match them all for the best possible sound stage, however because of my thoughts above... I have replaced the fronts and center, and am ok with my old speakers until I have the cash to add the matching surrounds.

[musicman1999]

For sure the surround channels don't get as much low frequency information so don.t need as wide a frequency range. In my set up the fronts are rated down to about 40 and the rears only about 55 but are of the same series so are timbre matched along with the center, this is far more important than matching frequency response. All your speakers need to speak with the same voice or front to back pans, for example, won't match up.

bill

[Slec]

I've always put far more stock in the left to right pans, than front to back. I always figured a more "invisible" sound stage could be achieved with matched speakers. i guess its a good thing my weird compulsion to have everything match will pay off!

[Marcusarilius]

I used to have 2 Energy Bi-Poles for my surrounds. Left over from the DVD days. It didn't take me very long to figure out how much I wanted to up-grade those with Uncompressed sound now in play. The amount of high quality sound and dynamics now coming out of the rear channels is stunning. For me it was well worth adding a couple towers back there.

[richteer]

Originally Posted by Slec

I'm not disagreeing, just asking a question...

The surrounds, and especially rear surrounds, don't handle the load and therefore don't require the same types of frequency response as the fronts and center...right?

That depends on the mix of the Blu-ray you're watching. Some movies make great use of the rear and surround channels, so the better they are, the more enjoyment you'll get out of your system (especially in these days of lossless audio).

[MatrixS2000]

Originally Posted by Marcusarilius

I used to have 2 Energy Bi-Poles for my surrounds. Left over from the DVD days. It didn't take me very long to figure out how much I wanted to up-grade those with Uncompressed sound now in play. The amount of high quality sound and dynamics now coming out of the rear channels is stunning. For me it was well worth adding a couple towers back there.

I would still go with dipoles back there - you can get dipoles that will do this job properly.