There’s no sound reason for the rear speakers to match the fronts.

Just look at the back of the ones you have now and check for Ohm rating and wattage. My system is one brand up front, another in the back.

The ones in the back will get used very lightly (as far as power is concerned) so you could even go lighter on the wattage back there.

Zat make sense?

@stratman37 Perfectly. What about matching a center to the fronts, though?

You might get away with NOT having to buy the traditional flat wide speaker you usually see. If space/asthetics permit, you could just use another one like the fronts. I picked up my front three at a thrift store, maybe craigslist (certainly where YOU live) will render you a decent one. I’ve heard that you don’t want to skimp on the center speaker – the one you’re talking about – ‘cause that’s where most of your dialogue comes from, and it also gets used MOST, power-wise.

I totally agree with @stratman37, there’s no real reason you need to match backs to fronts, they don’t get involved all that much anyway, and are just there for when there needs to be noise coming from behind you. Any good quality bookshelf type speaker should do it, you might check Boston Acoustics or Polk Audio, a couple of brands I’ve had luck with. Keep your bigger, nicer speakers in the front.

Regarding the center channel…have you thought at all about going 4.1 instead of 5.1? Most current home theater receivers have a setting where you tell it that you don’t have a center speaker, and the receiver will put this channel through the right & left speakers. It still sounds very realistic, I have my family room set up this way. Worth checking it out to see if you like the sound before investing in a speaker that you have to find a place for.

I used to run a lot of A and B chain alignments at the theater. So I have spent hundreds of hours watching what audio comes from what channel. Very little comes from the surrounds. The majority is from the center, next is left and right, then the sub, and barely any from the surrounds.

Even more off topic :: SDDS is a bit of a wreck since that is 7.1

Hi Andrew! I would recommend keeping the NHTs for your L and R; the main concern with Center channel is making sure it’s not too colored, so that dialogue sounds natural and not too boomy, or not shrill. Sometimes surrounds (budget surrounds especially) can sound really thin/tinny, and don’t produce as pleasing a sound for voice, but might work find for the occasional surround sound effect.

On properly encoded 5.1, usually the dialogue is only in the center channel, music in L/R, and sound effects utilizing L R LS RS; all sounds that reach into the lower octaves get split (crossover) to the Low Frequency Emitter (LFE, the .1 in 5.1). Generally, your L R channels play the music, so if regular stereo music sounds great through these channels, then you should be fine. No need to match the center to the L R though.