Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Surround Recommendations - QS8, M2, M22??

If you go into a movie theater circa 1990~2000 you can see the speakers hanging on the walls and get an idea as to how they are put together.

The room that you are making isn't much different. The back row of people are very much like the back row at the theater. With the omni directional radiating speakers that the QS4 or QS8 give, the surround sound gives the enveloping sound that worked in the design of those theaters. I could sit at the back and still got the surround experience even though I had most if not all of the speakers located infront of my seating position.

You have to look at the way your brain assembles the sound it hears and processes it. Most people seem to think in single sound waves hitting our ears and conclude that surround speakers need to be at a certain location behind you to give the correct effect. Reality is that you hear hundreds of echo/reflections of the sound in your room and your brain assembles all that info to give you placement. But omni speakers break the sound dispersion rules in they send sound out in a much wider wave so those echo/reflections from the speakers get to more easily bounce off the back wall, front walls as well as top/bottom/sides so your ear gets more emersive sound timing data and not an overload of direct sound hitting one ear before the relection sounds have had a chance to reach both ears.

Next you need to look at how ATMOS and DTS-X are working to see why they are suggesting going to a directional speaker over an Omni. They take all the sound as an object inside the room and sort of do like a ray-trace of how sound should hit the listener calculating the timing reflections and amplitude. Then send that sound from all the required speakers so that your ears her the direct and first reflection to let your brain figure out it's location of where the sound would be located. It is very interesting science. If you however put that into a omni directional speaker the math used to make the sound will all be off as the sound it not coming from that speaker in a direct radiating pattern, but more of a diffuse bubble. So for ATMOS / DTS-X is will not sound as good.


For the OP, he has said that he is not planning on going with that ATMOS/DTS-X technology so the need for direct radiating surround speakers is not required. He would get a better effect for the second row listeners with an omni speaker combination for surround.


A bit long winded reply but just thought that I would give my take on the matter.