Matched speakers

[Ur_Mom]

I am looking to buy some home theater speakers. I'd like to go with a decent pair of front speakers (left, right and center). I'm looking at either Axiom, Polk or Klipsch. Budget of ~$1000 for the set.

But, I am unsure on the rear speakers. As they aren't nearly as used as the front, do they need to be matched? I plan on going with the same brand, but a model or two lower (in cost and apparently features). Would they still sound good in a movie settings (music will be 2.1 only for the most part)? It's a 7.1 setup. Subwoofer will be a custom build 15" Dayton HO model tuned to ~20Hz, ported with 500w BASH amp.

I could save some money by going cheap on the surround (well, cheaper than going with an additional grand or $1500 on the surrounds). Just don't want to really kill the audio quality or experience.

I don't think there will be a problem, but I wanted to make sure before budgeting out this system. I'll be buying in January. I will be using a Denon AVR-1912 receiver (don't want to go independent amps - keeping it simple).

 

[TESLA]

Feel free to go cheaper on the surrounds.

There are benefits to matching timbre for your entire system, but these benefits are relatively minor for movies - nothing to worry about for the most part.

Although not always necessary, I strive for the same tweeter design all around. E.g. I will try to avoid pairing soft dome surrounds with metallic drivers on the LCR.

I really like your idea of going down a step in a line or line in a brand for the surrounds. (Generally, if I am not buying a flagship product within a line, I will usually go higher up for the center than the LR speakers as well.)

Some things to note, however:
Not all speakers make good surrounds. Bipole and dipole configurations and boundary correction may be importance to your space.
Try to resist going too small on your surrounds to the point where the upper-low range is going to your sub, potentially ruining the surround experience. (Although even this is not of too much importance at times as surround channels generally won't carry much in the low frequencies.)

 

[Ur_Mom]

Cool. Thanks for the input.

 

[Loading]

My 7.1 setup is just a melting pot of random speakers. Front towers are home built MTM with 8" woofers, center is a Klipsch, sides are home built towers with a 4" hi range, and 4 4" midrange, and the rears are Energy connoisseur mounted to the ceiling pointing down at the couch. Sub is a 15" home built sealed design.

I agree with Tesla, even with a very varied system, with all the speakers having different tweets, you can't really notice they are to different. When something pans all the way around it sounds seamless, can't really tell that they are different setups. And when it's something like background music in a movie, well, it all blends together and then it's pretty much impossible to tell.

When I built the theater I was really concerned the speakers were so varied, but it's very hard to notice. I just wouldn't skimp to much on the 'size' of the surrounds/sides. As Tesla said, you WILL notice if the speakers can't drop below 100 hz. For music soundtracks in a movie, doesn't really matter, but for lower freq things like laser type blaster weapons in movies, they can drop a little low. The explosion that follows is usually low enough that the sub will handle all of it.

 

[LeninGHOLA]

I ran unmatched surrounds for a year with no issues. Different brands entirely, too. LCR is definitely the set you need to have timbre matched. I was using Polk Monitor 40's for surrounds, so they were able to handle all the 80hz and above stuff to those channels. All I really did was rerun Audyssey and bump the surround treble down a notch, since my fronts weren't as bright.

 

[matteos]

As long as center matches fronts you are good. I'd get the axioms over the polks or Klipsch

 

[xFROSTx]

Since it's already been pointed out that you can go cheap with your surrounds, I would like to play devil's advocate and point out why it might be worth it to "match" your speakers. The way I see it, the benefit to "matched" speakers isn't better sound quality - rather the benefit of having ready to go replacement speakers that are perfectly interchangeable!

I only bring this up because I have seen some pretty good deals on Polk's monitor line multiple times - to the point that I jumped on it myself the second time I saw it and upgraded my fronts to Monitor 70's and my center to a CS2. I was then planning on reusing my old RCA Linaeum bookshelf speakers as my surrounds, but they were in desperate need of new enclosures after 10 years. They still work perfectly, but they got beat on in college and look terrible these days. After pricing out new enclosures on parts express (Old college roomate worked for them at the time and was going to give me the employee discount), as well mounting options, I realized it would end up costing more to refurbish my old speakers, rather than just add 4 Monitor 50's to my order and just use them as surrounds. Overkill, yeah - but for me the value was that I don't have to bother with mounting, spend time making the new enclosures and when I inevitably change my mind about something with the entertainment center because of some crazy bug I got up my ass, I have the comfort knowing that my surrounds can be used as fronts as well - which is something my RCA speakers would definitely struggle with. Like I mentioned earlier, I only bring it up because of those crazy 75% off sales on Polk speakers I've seen before.