What are the best speakers for a 7.1 home theatre setup?

Question

I have wired my living room for a 7.1 audio setup but i have no clue on what kind of speakers i should use. There is one problem, i only have the availability to hang all the speakers, since all the wiring is out of the ceiling. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

The most important thing is to make sure you use seven IDENTICAL speakers.  This is how they mix movies in the studio and it's how we should play them at home.  No designated "CENTER" or "REAR" speakers.  Scroll down to the bottom of this link for an example: http://www.avtruths.com/speaker.html

The best way to find the speakers you'll like is to take your favorite CD, preferably with some female vocals (very hard for a speaker to reproduce properly) and demo one PAIR of speakers at a time.  Find the pair you like the best and get 6 (or 7) of them.  Try it and see.  You won't regret it.

Answer 2

Boston

B&W

Bang & Olufsen

Martin and Logan

Davinci

Just to name a few great brands.

Answer 3

We just wired up our home theater in the same configuration.  We used the klipsch reference series speakers.  KILLER sound for their price.  They dont sell the high end klipsch stuff at best buy or anything.  We had to go through Klipsch themselves.  As for a sub, we got a velodyne dps-12.  In my opinion its almost too much bass for the room.  good luck!

Answer 4

A couple of points: no-one but you knows your needs, preferences and constraints better than you. Any suggestions are simply options.  Second, there is very little 7.1 material so focus on 5.1 systems and you can add 2 more speakers to that if you like. Third, ideally the speakers should all be the same or from the same family to ensure "timbre matching".

A word on placement: you can hide the wires or use flat wire that can be painted or spackled, so you are not really limited to ceiling height.

As to types of speakers there are in-wall speakers that can be mounted flush with the walls/ceiling ... but many consider them an inferior option.

You can "hang" bookshelf speakers on the wall or put them on small shelves.

That said, the usual guidelines for speaker placement have the front speakers about 3 feet above the floor level, the centre just below or right on top of the display, and surrounds to either side, slightly behind and about two feet above ear level, and the rear speakers about the same height as the surrounds but on the back wall.

Putting speakers too high risks colouration from "corner" effects.

Other than that filter the thousands of speakers available using cost and style criteria, and then pick from this subset based on sales/support availability, and sound.

You are the only one who can pick, so be prepared to do some reasearch and listening.

Find reviews of models you might be interested in by searching on "review" plus the model number.

That's about it .... happy researching and listening.