Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater choices for 6.1 or 7.1 setup

I was just thinking about what would be the best setup for surrounds.

(a) 3 qs8's in the rear
(b) 4 qs8's in the rear
(c) 2 qs8's for surrounds and 2 m22ti's for rear surrounds

I cannot decide. Dolby suggests the rear surrounds to be direct radiating which would lean towards (c). But (a) sounds like a great idea due to the design of the qs8's firing at 45 degrees in each direction. It's hard to rely on what is suggested by Dolby since axiom has the only quad-pole surround avaliable that I know of.

My living room right now would only allow a 5.1 setup since my couch is on the back wall, unless I mounted a single qs8 on the ceiling against the back wall with the tweeters firing down. This is the setup in (a). But that might sound strange. So, I was just thinking for a few years down the road when I have a larger dedicated theather room.

Anyone who has tryed 2 of the suggested setups and preferred one over the other would probably be most helpful. But any thoughts as to which would sound best with a good explanation would also be helpful.

thanks in advance for any replies, Nick

Nick, there're two reasons often given(by Dolby and THX among others)for using two rear surround speakers: first, even with a mono signal that should be imaged at the center back(which one speaker would appear to be able to do well)a psychoacoustic phenomenon can cause a "reversal" and the sound supposed to come from directly behind can instead appear to come from directly in front; secondly, using processing such as DPLIIx or Logic 7, two and five channel material can send different "stereo" signals to each of the two back speakers. On the "reversal", it's been suggested that a single very wide dispersion speaker such as the QSs is less likely to be subject to this, but I haven't seen any evidence on the point. On the "stereo" back surrounds point, this would appear to be worthwhile for present two and five channel material as well as possible future material with seven discrete channels.