BillH,
As some will recall, I went through ad nauseum testing of back wall vs mid ceiling mounted 7.1 rears. I had ordered QS8s for the backs. My room is 31' deep by 23'wide (seating 12' from screen, back wall 16' behind seating). Originally I had direct firing spkrs on the back wall. Yes, Audyssey (or other) does adjust for the distance, BUT if anyone is occupying that rear half of the room (my wife did), they get blasted by the elevated dB level req'd to reach the seating position! After much OCD testing/thinking, my wife actually preferred the idea of mid ceiling mounted 7.1's so she would not get blasted! I caught much grief with back wall 7.1's! Do not do this, trust me.
The bottom line from my lengthy testing:
1) Back wall- no way, unless no one is ever back there, but if you must, use direct firing speakers.
2) Mid ceiling, 7' or so back from listening position worked best in my large great room. AND both my wife and my concerns that they would look like eyesores mid ceiling was not the case (for us).
3) In mid air, in my large room, the QS8s did not project well. They lost too much low end! The theoretical 'rule' is that the sub picks up the missed low end. In my case, when turned up to loud movie levels, the radiant firing Q's sounded way too bright. The M2 sized direct firing speakers had much better sound (bass, etc), which makes sense due to the much larger interior space of the bookshelf style spkr.
4) Looks of mid ceiling: I actually covered the black DF speakers with white paper to see how they blend in better. Now we don't notice them much at all. I will eventually get some white speaker cloth too.
5) I made my own custom brackets thinking I needed to be able to rotate them towards the back half of the room for 7 ch stereo for parties or just full room listening. The 7 ch stereo sounds great with them facing to wards the HT. The M80s seem to fill the room just fine so it sounds good everywhere.
6) I used my DIY 8' speaker stands to test speakers (QS8 vs. direct firing) and best location for over two weeks. Did I mention OCD.
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Photo bucket- many photos If you want to read my saga
in it's entirety, you can find it here.. (Warning: enter at own peril... 11 pages
)
