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Choosing Surround Speakers

How to Choose Surround Sound Speakers

In today’s movie soundtracks, and especially if you listen to surround music, the sounds come from all directions and can cover all frequencies from bass to treble. So you’ll need high quality surround speakers.

Placing Your Surround Sound Speakers

How and where you place surround speakers depends in part on room size, your listening preferences, the size of the surround speakers you’ve chosen, and your comfort level with cutting holes in your walls or ceiling.

Use conventional speakers if you think you’ll want to find a permanent place for them only after you’ve tried different locations. Or if you want to place them on a bookcase, table, etc. Remember that you can place most conventional speakers on a wall also. Many TSC speakers come complete with mounting brackets for just this purpose. Finally, in-wall or in-ceiling surround speakers are a good choice if you want to minimize any décor issues.

For movies, mount your surround speakers on the side walls slightly behind and well above ear height. If music is your primary source, mount the surround sound speakers on the rear wall well away from each other but not all the way into room corners. Also, keep the surround speakers at roughly the same height as your front speakers.

Matching your surround sound speakers to your front left, center, and right channel speakers

Your surround speakers should be similar in sound quality to your front speakers. Although it isn’t absolutely necessary, your system will probably sound better if choose your surround speakers to match your front channel speakers. However, if you use your home theater system infrequently, this isn’t critical.

Choosing Surround Sound Speakers

To help you choose, ask yourself these questions:

Are my surround sound speakers primarily for movie soundtracks or surround music listening?
Do I want to place my surround speakers on the wall or on tables so they can be easily moved later?
Am I handy enough to use some simple tools to install In-Wall or In-Ceiling speakers?