Hi I am hoping someone can answer a few questions regarding surround sound speakers for a HT. I'm new to the HT setup and am not sure as to the correct thought process on this matter. Now I don't have any main speakers in mind yet but am instead trying to get a little knowledge before diving in. I understand that most high end speakers have a surround speaker that matches but should you use only these or only same brands for harmonic purposes? Also what is the key feature for a surround speaker...bass, treble, size or none of these? Lastly if you are running a full home theater with separates do you really need the required amp power for the surrounds since you really don't utilize these speakers to their full power? sorry if these are stupid questions. Thanks
In theory only, all the speakers should be the same speaker. If you use Thiel CS3.7 as fronts you should use them as rears and center, but that is not practical, especially the center. In Home Theater set up using the same brand and model line helps insure uniform sound all around. When a race car drive across the front we don't want it to turn into a VW as it passes through the center channel. Rear channels for Home Theater should be placed on the sides of the seating area above the listeners head. A dipole or bipole speaker is used for this application where a tweeter and woofer face the front of the room and anther set faces the back of the room on the same speaker to create a diffused sound . The rear speakers are used for ambient sound and the diffused effect works well with this. Regular front firing speakers can be used as rears and with music some may prefer them. All speakers have to be balanced so the fronts are not going to be louder than the rears, but if your driving big power hungry fronts and much smaller rears yes the amps will be different but all channels can start with 100 watts.
To add to what Casey said, yes if a front firing speaker is used for surround speakers then they should be about 3 feet above the seating area, directly next to the ears and pointing to each other and not to the listeners ears, also since the surround speakers do not produce or have to produce base it is not necessary to have big speakers, also like Casey said a dipole speaker set with equally matching impedence, keeping other ratings like wattage per RMS should also be kept in perspective. tha make of the diaphram and also the box make a lot of difference since this should add to the sound, hope this helps