Wide range surround speakers?

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One place where it looks to me like a full-range, or at least wide-range, speaker might work very well is in surround sound speakers, side or rear channels of a 5.1 or 7.1 home theater/music system. That is a much less demanding application than the main speakers, both the frequency range involved and the loudness required are lower. It should be relatively easy to find drivers, maybe even fairly cheap.

Linkwitz gives one design, 5.5 inch Vifa drivers mounted facing up atop a pipe which acts as a sealed box:
Surround loudspeaker
He says it is designed for music, and sub-optimal for home theater, but I can live with that.

Another possibility might be a transmission line, to get some low end extension out of some relatively small speaker. For bass, the line needs to be long, which is inconvenient. For surround sound, though, length might be OK. I wonder if some speakers might work well with a pipe acting as transmission line. Quarter wave tuning length for 100 Hz is 86 cm so you could get to an interesting tuning frequency without elevating the speakers too drastically.

Anyone tried something along these lines? Any drivers to suggest?
 
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I've always thought it would make more sense that all the speakers in a surround system should be identical, especially for the front channels. If different speakers were used that have different drivers ,enclosures and crossovers, wouldn't all of the different phase shifts and frequency responses cause problems? Just wonderin'.

Mike
 
I'm learning that the issue with speaker matching is mostly associated with the front speakers, because this is where 99% of the time you'll hear human voices from, which we are more sensitive to. The surrounds tend to fill in the other noises and matching is more for aesthetics than anything else (IMHO).

I've been playing around with different speaker types for my HT. I built a set of full range single drivers. In the end I used my old hi-fi floorstanders for the front left and right. They are fairly big and reach down flat to 27Hz. I have learned that my preference is very clearly for large floorstanders for the front left and right. I find they are the most critical of the speakers in my system.
 
Hi,

Whilst it is true, it is not true of discrete multichannel.

For matrixed surround the rear has little bass and little extreme treble content.

You have to be specific for the context. But the fact is for 2.1 compatibility
for 4.1 or 5.1 encoding the older matrix systems are often emulated, or not,
and in those cases the 2.1 sound is extremely poor, with channels missing.

Linkwitz's design was for matrixed mutichannel, and makes sense for that.

rgds, sreten.
 
I use Tang Band 3" FRs as rear surrounds,

Built a triangle shaped sealed box, put four 3" full ranges in it, aimed the "point" of the speaker at the seated position of the person and it sounds very good. I was going for a sound field and did not want to hear it on axis, the rising response of FRs helped there. The main reason for using four of them (2 per side of the 90 degree angle) power handling, keep them at 8 ohms and improved output to match the LCR speakers.

All a matter of personal taste, some people like to "hear" the surrounds but I prefer a more diffused setup. The surrounda are about one meter from the back wall and one pair/one side of FRs bounce off the back wall--the other pair fire in front of you. The slight physical delay of the splayed speaker tends to mix is a bit better.

In theory, I figured I was making a mess--figured I could add tweeters between the 3" FRs at 3 KHz (D'Appolito) if it bothered me. So far, only good things have been said and my friends mentioned that they are leaning towards splayed or diffused surrounds.

My room is not optimum so the splayed approach works better for me--as always, YMMV.

The only downside of using FRs for surround arrays is you'll start reading the full range section and try to find justification for building another set of speakers. :eek::cool:
 
I have been using up-firing FE167E's for my surrounds. For most of that time, my mains were also FE167E's. I think that this has worked well. For movies, the surrounds are not intended to blend with the mains -- they are for effects that are off stage rear. 5.1 music may be different. I don't have any decent music DVD's.

With the demise of the FExx7E's. I have moved on. I now have Alpair 7's as mains, set as 'small'. The FE167E's still seem fine for the surrounds, but I will probably go to up-firing CHR-70's once they become available again. At least the boxes will be smaller. But then, I don't like center channel, so take this for what it is worth.

Bob
 
I have projector with a DIY painted screen. As a result the front L and R speakers are widely separated and a middle speaker is necessary when I have several people sitting in a row since not everyone can sit in the 'sweet spot'. The middle speaker carries a lot of information, especially the vocals and having 3 speakers up front makes it work.

It just happens that I have a pair of commercial 2-way floorstanders for L and R, I'm sure a pair of full range speakers would have been suitable. But they would have to have good bass extension, certainly better than the 6 litre boxes I built which were designed to work down to 80Hz at best. My own experience is that I really enjoy having good LF response from the front speakers (and they are PMC MLTLs).

Pashley, to answer your question. Based on my limited experience, I don't recommend 'audiophile' drivers like the late lamented Fostex FE127 as they appear to me to need big boxes to provide any bass and in my boxes they are seem lacking for Home Theatre (IMHO). I'm about to try some 4" sized CSS EL-70 drivers for the surrounds, although the new CHR/P-70 from Mark Audio which are due out next month may be as good or better. I'll be trying them in something similar to the planet10 mMar-kel70 enclosure.

p.s. I would add that if I were listening to movies in a smaller space than an open basement, I'd would consider smaller speakers all around. I know one person has built a 5.1 system around my Martello speaker design which is a 3" driver in a 2 litre box.
 
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Pioneer have an 8" full range, claimed response 39 - 16K Hz, 91 Db @ 1 W 1 m. Parts Express offer them for $14, less if you buy several.
GRS 8FR-8 Full-Range 8" Speaker Pioneer Type B20FU20-51FW 292-430

The THX spec wants bipolar speakers for surround sound. Linkwitz says he uses single speakers pointed up, fine for music but not ideal for movies. Lots of people use ordinary full range or two-way boxes.

I'm thinking four of those Pioneers per box, wired series-parallel. One in front, one straight up, two on an angled back.
 
Pioneer have an 8" full range, claimed response 39 - 16K Hz, 91 Db @ 1 W 1 m. Parts Express offer them for $14, less if you buy several.
GRS 8FR-8 Full-Range 8" Speaker Pioneer Type B20FU20-51FW 292-430

The THX spec wants bipolar speakers for surround sound. Linkwitz says he uses single speakers pointed up, fine for music but not ideal for movies. Lots of people use ordinary full range or two-way boxes.

I'm thinking four of those Pioneers per box, wired series-parallel. One in front, one straight up, two on an angled back.

as well as this new driver might work for the application, note the qualification/disclaimer of "type" in the part number i.e. IINM this is not a "real" Pioneer

with as many drivers per box as you're envisioning, physically smaller drivers could very well work quite satisfactorily - I've got my own favorites, but you pick your own

if these are for the surrounds, just how large is the venue?
 
Quite apart from choice of driver, what do people think of the notion of using four wide-range drivers in a surround speaker?

I once heard Bose 901s carefully set up and with a good amp; they sounded awfully good to me, but so have various other systems and I am not even slightly tempted to use 901s for my main speakers. I think, though, that in surround speakers the direct/reflected mix might be ideal. THX seem to agree since they want diploe surrounds.
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
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Quite apart from choice of driver, what do people think of the notion of using four wide-range drivers in a surround speaker?

I see no need for 4 drivers. you could get 2 drivers much better than the GRS (generally regarded as a poor substute for the well liked Pioneer BOFU)

Like the Splayed surrounds in this document http://frugal-phile.com/boxlib/P10free/MT-HT-Appendix-191209.pdf

The CHP70.2 should readily substitute for the CHR if you desire a paper cone solution.

dave
 
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