Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater 5.1 to 7.1 - Surrounds Question

I am torn between going for a 5.1 or just go for the 7.1.

Mostly music and movies usage with the occasional PS-3 shoot 'em ups for some socially acceptable stress relief. Room is 14 x 16 and I don't do loud volume.

I plan to use M22's as the fronts, a VP150 center and QS8's for the two surrounds. I have an existing active Velodyne 12" sub that provides more than enough thump for my tastes.

My goal is balance as opposed to raw volume capability.

My question is if I go the 7.1 route should I pair the 8's with QS4's for the rear duty.

Or should I do four QS-4's?

The question is how much room do you have behind the listening position to make use of the rear channels? Generally you need about 4' or more to really utilize the rear channels, if it is less then you could think about a rear channel QS8 otherwise the M2s are a popular choice.

The answer to your question lies in your room size, and where you are sitting in relationship to the back wall. From the dimensions you listed, 7.1 might be difficult.

I would keep the sides and rears the same. In that size of room I'm not sure how much benefit the rears will be though. My room is the same width and about 3 ft longer and I'm utilizing a 5.1 setup. If I had closer to 2500+ cu ft, I'd consider rears but really they need to be placed 3-4 ft behind your seating position to work best.

Why not go 5.1, try it out first, then if you feel you still want to try a 7.1 system, go ahead and order a couple more "Q's" afterwards?

Wow - thanks for the prompt replies!

I think I underestimated - the room is slightly larger - 16 wide by 19 long (screen is at one side of the length). There is about 3 - 4 feet in back of the couch.

It may be sage advice to go with the 5.1 first and rough in the wires for the extra rears while I'm in the crawlspace.



Can you clarify? You mean a single QS8, or a pair of M2's, even if there is less than 4 feet?

ps any tricks for fishing cable down an insultated (fiberglass)wall?

To echo what's already been said, the 5.1 vs 7.1 argument really boils down to the room size & dimensions. In oddly shaped, large, or rooms with weird acoustics, you can see a benefit in those extra rear channels from increased rear fill-in. But 14x16 is a pretty small room, as far as HT goes. That's not a problem - of course - I just don't think you really will need the extra fill-in that you get from the 6+7 speakers. Just calibrate & balance the 5.1 well, and you'll get that all-enveloping, smooth-transitioning sound that you're after.

My den is about 18x30. I've tinkered with setting up rear 6+7.1 channels in the past. It didn't do much for me. There just wasn't enough of a difference to really make me say, "oh wow!". I run 5.1 with the QS8's and am thrilled with the setup. The dimensionality and transparency of the QS speakers are simply stunning. Audio effects move seamlessly behind us and have an absurd amount of spaciousness and depth. So much so, it's sometimes creepy. We've heard people running around in the room upstairs, above the den. We've heard people talking in the yard behind the den. Fellow NFL fans screaming obscenities from the bathroom adjoining the den. Whispers from the other end of the couch. Cannons firing from all around the room. All thanks to those QS8's. Or the house is haunted.

My advice would be to start with a pair of QS8's now and see how that works for you. You can always add more channels later.

And actually, I *think* that I remember reading somewhere that the 6+7 channels in a 6/7.1 setup are supposed to be normal mono-directional speakers (M22's, M2's, M3's, etc) and not the omni-directional kind like the QS's. But maybe I'm mis-remembering that. Might want to check into that before (if/when) you ever do go 7.1

Good luck! And welcome to the Axiom owner nut-house.

My room is a little bigger than yours with a bit more room behind the couch. AND going from 5.1 to 7.1 was really a pretty subtle change for me. I like QS8's for the back, too. If your experience is like mine, the 5.1 setup with QS8's will be pretty darn satisfying.

Tom, you have to calibrate your speakers correctly. lol.

It is fair to point out there is a very, very small percentage of material that will actually give you distinct sound to 7 channels and of those titles on blu ray I've listened to the difference has been so subtle I wouldn’t' go to great lengths to do 7.1 for myself and I have a very similar room size to you. In larger rooms as already mentioned it can serve a purpose to help fill the sound out in the room, but for the point of hearing 7 distinct channels I don't think the source material has a high enough penetration right now to bother.

As far as fishing the wire, is your ceiling finished? Dry walled? Drop ceiling? Do you have access to it from an attic maybe? If you can get access it isn't to bad to fish down insulated walls if there is some sort of vapour barrier or something between the wall and insulation... if there isn't then it can get a little tricky... here's hoping you don't have any horizontal bracing on your walls or you're in big trouble

I actually pulled my baseboards off and fished from my baseboards up for my surrounds and ran my wires behind my baseboard. Or rather I fished from the hole I made, down to the baseboards.

If less than 4ft QS8's either a pair or a single, I ran a 6.1 system for years and it worked very well as the QS spreads the sound out very well, but with the new 7.1 movies an extra rear channel might be warranted.

If the distance is more than 4ft then I would recommend some M2s or M22s as the distance will allow the speaker to spread the sound out and also throw the sound out towards the listening position. Although alot of this is personal prefference, some people still prefer the QS all the way around.

But to say it another way. There is some 7.1 discrete content out there now, and there will only be more in the future. Along with PLIIx which can make 7.1 out of anything (not to mention PLIIz which can make 9.1 out of anything). Don't rule out support for 7.1 if you have even the smallest interest in using it in the future. At least run the wires, or make some allotment for it, even if you stick with 5.1 for now.

'Nook, welcome. As some of the replies indicated, the determining factor isn't the size of the room, but the availability of enough space behind the listening position for a good rear sound field to develop. There's no hard and fast rule, but at least 4' is a common suggestion. If not, a 7.1 setup wouldn't likely be of significant benefit(and a single rear surround in 6.1 wouldn't be either), and mounting the side surrounds a couple feet farther back than directly to the side would give a bit of phantom back effect to help out some. You could consider moving the couch slightly toward the front to provide more space behind you.

Junk in the trunk?

Why not start with 5.1 and see if that's good enough? Or if you have a newer receiver, adding WIDE or HEIGHT speakers adds more to the overall effect - so I'm told.

I believe I'll be going with the HEIGHT speakers soon. According the the people that invented it (Dolby PLIIz or Audyssey's DSX), the order of importance is WIDE followed by HEIGHT.

But in my room, WIDEs are out of the question.

Thanks for all the great advice and suggestions so far - this looks to be a very active and helpful forum.

I recognize that 7.1 material is just starting to emerge in the marketplace.

I just bought a new receiver on Boxing Day so I should be good in that department for the next couple of years. Well, actually I bought two because I couldn't decide which one I really wanted. I got a Yammie 6290 and a Denon 890. We'll see which one earns their place in the equipement rack.

Although the room is not an odd shape I still don't have huge placement flexibilty because on one side wall at the midway point is a fireplace so furnture is either before or after it.

The wire fishing idea should work - both suurounds are on an exterior wall so there should be a vapour barrier. But I am considering the baseboard idea too.

The surrounds will go on side walls that are 6 feet long so I could go a foot or two in front, even or a foot or two in back as one of you mentioned.

Since the QS's seem to be somewhat "multidirectional" if I mount them behind the main listening area should I purchase a pivoting bracket so they can be angled or will a flat wall mount set-up be fine?

Thanks again for all the feedback.

Yes, if you use only side surrounds they should be positioned a couple feet farther back rather than directly to the side. The "multidirectional" nature of the QSs makes it unnecessary to aim them and they should be mounted flat to the wall.

I really wonder about what they choose to release in 7.1. There are some crazily unimportant catalog titles that get 7.1 audio, yet there are so many new big blockbusters that stick with 5.1.

I think it has to do a lot with whether the audio is being remixed for the release or not. One of the first DVDs with DTS ES 6.1 was Se7en. The picture and audio were completely reworked for DVD release, so they figured since the 6.1 tech was available they might as well use it. I figure the same is happening with BD. When the sound is being completely remixed they figure might as well go all the way. But for recent theatrical releases which already have strong 5.1 mixes, they just get ported straight to disc.

By the way, the new 7.1 mix on The Nightmare Before Christmas BD is amazing.

Man, I fell asleep during my viewing of that Blu-ray, and I still haven't made a point of watching it in its entirety, but yes, that movie really pops on BD, both in picture and sound.

Some people seem to think direct radiating speakers are best for the rears and push the M2's....but I never hear of anybody pushing the on-walls or in-walls. The M2's just seem to be too deep and perhaps overkill for the rears. It seems to me that the W2's or W3's would be up to the job while staying out of the way. What do you guys think?

Based on the amount of audio information coming from the rear speakers I doubt I would be able to tell the difference between the Ms or the Ws in the back. My preference would still be for the Ms since they can be more easily re-tasked but if you knew 100% that you were going to leave them in the back and in/on-wall fits/looks better then I couldn’t give a good sound quality based reason not to use them.

That was my thinking Grunt. I know the speakers I will use to replace my 401 Bose rears will stay in place so I'm not worried about the re-tasking issue. I think they will be my next Axiom purchase.

That is one movie I would not want to fall asleep during--yeek! Assuming you're talking about Se7en.

Oh, I was referring to The Nightmare Before Christmas. Se7en is certainly disturbing, but I wouldn't mind it on Blu-ray. I don't know how many times I would actually watch it again, but it's a well-done movie.

Actually, I think we were talking about The Nightmare Before Christmas. Alas, Se7en is not available on BD yet.

The Game, Se7en, and Fight Club are all some of my top movies of all time. Only the last is on BD (and very much worth the purchase).

Se7en and Ransom are two movies that I saw, thought I was glad that I had seen them, and decided that I never wanted to see them again.