How important are good speakers for rear/surround effects?

[admin_exported]

When upgrading a 5.1 / 6.1 / 7.1 system why is it important to have high cost speakers at the rear.

I understand the need for good fronts / centre and sub but as the rears only play "ambient" effects or the odd panning effect is it really necessary to plow as much moolah into the rears?

Eg. Why spend £1000.00 on all speakers, would there be any benefit on spending the majority of the budget for the fronts/sub and buying cheaper speakers for the rears?

Any comments?

 

[Anonymous]

Having similar thoughts / combined with the whole trying to avoid boxes on walls thing. Toying with Wharfedale's NXT flat panel speakers. As the lovely fr0g pointed out in an earlier thread of mine, they're only £70, so if they're not great it's not a massive loss. As far as sound quality goes, I've not heard them, but the logic seems to say that if combined with a proper set of fronts and sub, the inherent flat panel drawbacks won't be a problem...
However it might be not much of a saving not having the rears eg. Monitor Audio RS6 floorstanders (£600), RSW12 sub (£650) and RSLCR centre (£249) comes to £1,499 on their own. Adding a pair of rears to make it the full 5.1 set is 'only' another £200.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah... flat panels for rears would suit me too in terms of space.

I might research into this option.

I will HAVE to have rears though as films (to me at least) lose so much atmosphere without them!

 

[professorhat]

Well, quite a lot of traditional speaker packages do put less expensive speakers at the rears (e.g. the B&W 685 Home Theatre package uses 685s for the fronts, but the cheaper 686s for the rears). However, they are usually in keeping with the rest of the system as you need to have good tonal balance between all the speakers in the package ideally, to ensure any sounds sweeping round the room sound "right". It's true that having rear speakers by the same manufacturer isn't as important as the front three, but sticking with the same throughout is generally recommended where possible.

If you can, book a session with a dealer listening to a proper speaker package and then try swapping out the rears for the ones you mention. You may be surprised how much of a difference it makes.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeh some good suggestions from the prof again listen to them. Also, try out some bi-polar speakers as they are still quite small and spead the sound all round the back area of the room well.
Should get a quality pair for around the 150 pound mark.

 

[fr0g]

I currently have MS 902Sig (they were the bigger box version of the original 902,s and better than the current 902i) at the rear. They are IMO a good £200 speaker, and I wouldn't personally dream of upgrading. I like the sound I am getting, but the rears are really only for sound effects. In fact I am gonna swap out the 902Sigs for some cheaper 902s that I have on my living room TV, effectively downgrading them (and upgrading the downstairs telly )

In all honesty though I personally would be happy with a 3.1 system. But thats just taste. I like having a decent centre speaker as it holds the dialogue central wherever you sit, and, I find it makes hearing what people say much easier, and of course the stereo pair should be preferably the same make (although I read somewhere that this may be a little bit of a red herring as the speaker is almost always different Either way I recently replaced my centre with a Dali Vokal 2, so I now have a quite nice 5.1 system with Dali front 3, and MS rear. There is no way that I could tell that the rears were a different brand, or far cheaper than my fronts. The sub us important if you like action movies, although my MJA pro 50 isn't really meant for major air-shifting, and I'd like a bigger one at some stage...
In the end though it's subjective... best is to listen in a few proper dem rooms, and test the difference for yourself.