Threads like this one are sometimes annoying because they get people thinking and lead to expenditure of time and money, sometimes admittedly with happy results...
Reading Dr. Geddes' post about his surrounds being right on top of him and being dipoles in tubes (that might be from another thread, or another forum) made me think that I could probably go 7.1 in that way.
I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on the minimum acceptable speakers for surround channels. My mains are 12" Tannoy dual concentrics (12 DMT II, to be in bespoke cabinets hopefully next week) and rated at 96dB/w/m sensitive. I found that I couldn't really tell a difference between using 8" Tannoy dual concentrics (92 dB/w/m rated sensitivity) and 5.25" KEF Uni-Qs (89 dB/w/m rated sensitivity) in a previous room. (In both cases, "omni," radiation, by which I mean high-mounted and pointing up.) I'm currently using the Tannoys in a 5.1 setup, also firing up. But I wonder if I could get away with going even smaller, say making four tube-shaped dipoles to hang from the ceiling using a total of 8 Aura NS3 3" widebanders (84 dB/w/m, huge xmax for such a tiny driver). Or maybe those 4" TangBand bamboo cone widebanders. I like the NS3 idea best, admittedly, because I have half the drivers I'd need on hand and the remaining four are so cheap.
Reading Dr. Geddes' post about his surrounds being right on top of him and being dipoles in tubes (that might be from another thread, or another forum) made me think that I could probably go 7.1 in that way.
I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on the minimum acceptable speakers for surround channels. My mains are 12" Tannoy dual concentrics (12 DMT II, to be in bespoke cabinets hopefully next week) and rated at 96dB/w/m sensitive. I found that I couldn't really tell a difference between using 8" Tannoy dual concentrics (92 dB/w/m rated sensitivity) and 5.25" KEF Uni-Qs (89 dB/w/m rated sensitivity) in a previous room. (In both cases, "omni," radiation, by which I mean high-mounted and pointing up.) I'm currently using the Tannoys in a 5.1 setup, also firing up. But I wonder if I could get away with going even smaller, say making four tube-shaped dipoles to hang from the ceiling using a total of 8 Aura NS3 3" widebanders (84 dB/w/m, huge xmax for such a tiny driver). Or maybe those 4" TangBand bamboo cone widebanders. I like the NS3 idea best, admittedly, because I have half the drivers I'd need on hand and the remaining four are so cheap.
Perhaps I should have been more clear when I said "as full range as possible".
By this I was not implying large full range speaker that go down to an honest 20Hz. And are in 2-4 cubic foot cabinets. To me "as full range as possible" for surrounds means that they are no more than 3db down at around 40-60 Hz. Most good two way monitors of around .5 -.25 cubic foot can meet this requirement.
Since surrounds must be placed in real rooms they generally cannot be large in most HT setups. However, a good quality pair of 6.5 or 8 inch 2-ways of bookshelf size do work a whole lot better than the little tiny computer desk sized surrounds that you see in the HT-in-a-box packages. These kinds of surrounds should be avoided if at all possible.
By this I was not implying large full range speaker that go down to an honest 20Hz. And are in 2-4 cubic foot cabinets. To me "as full range as possible" for surrounds means that they are no more than 3db down at around 40-60 Hz. Most good two way monitors of around .5 -.25 cubic foot can meet this requirement.
Since surrounds must be placed in real rooms they generally cannot be large in most HT setups. However, a good quality pair of 6.5 or 8 inch 2-ways of bookshelf size do work a whole lot better than the little tiny computer desk sized surrounds that you see in the HT-in-a-box packages. These kinds of surrounds should be avoided if at all possible.
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