What is the difference between surround speakers and regular?

Question

Is it the speaker itself or the audio channel it’s connected to?

In other words can any speaker be connected to the surround channel?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

In small installations there is no difference whatsoever. I have five identical speakers and they work just fine. In large installations the two main speakers are usually floor standing speakers and if a screen is used or if the TV is mounted high enough a floor stander can be used for the center speaker too. Highly recommended. It is best by far to have the three front speakers identical.

Surround speakers should be mounted at or just slightly above ear level at the sides of the room, not behind you. If you have a seven speaker set up the two additional speakers go behind you. Obviously if this mounting scheme will not work for your room it can be modified.

There are special speakers for surround in high end installations to give a more diffuse image but I can't make a recommendation on this. You'll just have to listen for yourself and choose what sounds best to you.

Answer 2

Ideally they are identical.

Back in the ProLogic days there was 1 channel for the rear which was split to the 2 speakers. Dolby told sound engineers to only put diffuse sounds (wind, rain, rumbles) to these speakers and recommended the use of dipole speakers or speakers turned to bounce sound off the wall to help hide the location.

Dolby Digital 5.1 changed all that.  Each rear speaker gets a separate channel of sound and sound engineers WANT to draw your attention to the specific speaker.

Since they are making sounds swirl around now - ideally all your 5 or 7 speakers are identical to tone-match.