Is it possible to have too many speakers?

[Dr23]

This is sort of a random question, but hear me out.

In the near future I'll be furnishing a small family room. Nothing huge, nothing tiny, just an average size room for entertaining that I'd like to have a nice TV and speaker system for. I've asked a few friends about what sort of equipment I should pursue and opinions varied. Some had systems with five speakers and a woofer while one swore by his system which uses nine speakers and a woofer. He claimed it's noticeably better when compared to a system with seven or five.

Keep in mind all of these rooms are roughly the same size. Is there a noticeable difference between a 9-speaker system and one that uses seven? Or five? Without doing a ton of research, it seems like the extra speakers in a 9-speaker system - ones that'd probably go in the middle - wouldn't get much use.

So, is there a major difference here? Is it possible to have too many speakers? My gut says that nine is excessive and will produce similar results to a seven or a five. Thoughts?

 

[primestar31]

Are you married? Have kids? or live in an apartment? Is this basically going to be used mostly for day to day television viewing?

If so, anything more than 5 speakers (5.1 system) is way overkill, and IMO just not needed. I have a Vizio 2.1 Soundbar, and I can blow you out of the room that's only 18ft x 12 ft using it. I don't even leave the subwoofer turned on for regular viewing. It's way better sounding than my new LG tv set internal speakers, without being overwhelming to the family. Yet if I'm home alone and want to crank it a bit, I can.

 

[king3pj]

The amount of speakers doesn't have to affect volume. That being said I would forget the 9.1 right away. I don't know of anything encoded in 9.1 sound so 2 of the speakers will just mirror either your surrounds or your rears. I don't see the point of that unless you have a very large room.

5.1 or 7.1 is really your preference. I would stick with 5.1 and put the extra money into the subwoofer or receiver. Basically everything besides Blu-ray is limited to 5.1 sound so unless you watch a lot of Blu-ray movies you won't get much use out of your rears. Even the majority of Blu-ray is 5.1 but if you plan to use this room mostly for Blu-ray I wouldn't blame you for wanting 7.1 for those movies that take advantage of it.


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[Dr23]

Thanks for the input! Good to know that my views against the 9.1 system are valid. I even asked my friend that uses the 9.1 about that and he even admitted that most of the time there are speakers going unused. Obviously I asked about why you would need them and his response was so you could focus the sound in a certain part of the room. I couldn't help but laugh since there's a speaker roughly every three or four feet on one of his walls. Just nonsense.

I think I'll go with 5.1. The 7.1 is appealing, but I think it might be a bit much given my needs.

Thanks all!

 

[king3pj]

Thanks for the input! Good to know that my views against the 9.1 system are valid. I even asked my friend that uses the 9.1 about that and he even admitted that most of the time there are speakers going unused. Obviously I asked about why you would need them and his response was so you could focus the sound in a certain part of the room. I couldn't help but laugh since there's a speaker roughly every three or four feet on one of his walls. Just nonsense.

I think I'll go with 5.1. The 7.1 is appealing, but I think it might be a bit much given my needs.

Thanks all!

The thing is that he won't get 9 discrete audio channels unless he has an AVR that is somewhere above consumer grade.

Home audio receivers are going to max out at either 5.1 or 7.1. To use 9 speakers you would have to double up on a couple of your speaker outputs. If you do this you will have 2 sets of speakers outputting the exact same thing. You won't get any more than 7 separate audio channels no matter how many speakers you connect if your receiver only supports 7.1 audio.

Also, I'm no expert but I think connecting more than one speaker to a single output could be dangerous for both the receiver and the speakers with no real benefit. We would need someone with more knowledge about this to say for sure though.


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[jayn_j]

I will chime in here a bit.

It turns out that depending on what you watch, it may be tough to even get material with 5.1 encoding. Most comedies and older titles are stereo at best. I figure you probably want to watch action/adventure stuff though, and those do tend to be 5.1 or 7.1, at least in places.

The decision to go 7.1 vs 5.1 depends on the room as much as anything. In a small room, a pair of bookshelves on the rear wall in a 5.1 setup is adequate and you likely wouldn't hear a significant difference by adding the extra 2 speakers. This is especially true if your couch is up against the rear wall.

I generally recommend that people put the money they would have spent on the extra 2 speakers into improving the quality of the mains, sub and especially the center. You might even consider just going 3.0 to start and slowly add a sub and then rears. This is what I did as well as several others here. Over the course of 20 years, I have built my system into something that I am quite satisfied with and have not had to upgrade much at all.

 

[Ilya]

I agree with what others stated above. Unless you are building a dedicated Home Theater and are going to spend a lot of money on high-end equipment, you should not be looking beyond 5.1 or 7.1 at best.

On the other hand, if you are serious about going with 9.1 or 11.1, then you need to make sure to get a receiver capable of decoding DTS Neo:X. Not too many blu-rays support that yet though. I know of one so far: Expendables 2.

 

[king3pj]

I will chime in here a bit.

It turns out that depending on what you watch, it may be tough to even get material with 5.1 encoding. Most comedies and older titles are stereo at best. I figure you probably want to watch action/adventure stuff though, and those do tend to be 5.1 or 7.1, at least in places.

That is a little misleading. In my experience with Blu-ray just about everything is at least 5.1 with the vast majority being DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. Just about everything else is Dolby TrueHD 5.1 or Uncompressed PCM 5.1. There are some 7.1 soundtracks mixed in there now and then mostly on action movies but not even most of those tend to be 5.1 from what I have seen. This holds true across all types of movies from action to romance to comedy in my experience. Now, of course most comedies aren't going to have as much surround activity as an action movie with lots of explosions and bullets flying around but to say that they are stereo at best is a little misleading. They are still 5.1, they just tend to be more center channel orientated. The big exception to this is classic movies and older stuff. Even older movies like the Wizard of Oz still come with the original Mono mix as well as a remastered Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix so you can take your pick.

Now if you are talking about what you get from Cable or Satellite channels it's a little different. Here are my experiences with Dish. Basically all SD channels will give you stereo PCM. All HD channels will give you Dolby Digital. Some channels like MLB Network and Comedy Central broadcast in Dolby Digital 2.0. Most HD channels broadcast in Dolby Digital 5.1 but many of their shows might only use the front speakers. TBS for example, will show a lot of older shows like Seinfeld and Friends that original broadcast before 5.1 was the norm on TV. Your receiver might show 5.1 during those shows but you are really getting stereo for the most part.

Newer shows from the OTA and cable networks tend to do a pretty good job with 5.1. Shows like Game of Thrones on HBO and The Walking Dead on AMC have a lot of surround activity. In this case you are right in that comedy doesn't get as much 5.1 love. Shows like the Big Bang Theory are still going to be encoded in DD 5.1 but they aren't going to have the same activity as The Walking Dead.

 

[jayn_j]

Well, there is a difference between encoding a disc in DD 5.1 and actually putting in any surround information. An awful lot of material I watch is jarring when the 10 seconds of surround comes on. Home Theater magazine used to publish reviews that had a 7.1 map which they would color red, yellow or green, depending on how effectively the various channels were utilized. What amazed me was not so much how few had really active rears, but the high number that were primarily mono these days with everything coming out of the center.

You are about right on channel encoding over cable, but in my experience, the Game of Thrones examples tend to be the exceptions.

Still, I did not recommend staying away from 5.1. I said put that 7.1 money into better mains and center, and depending on the material the guy preferred, he might even want to go 3.0/3.1 and save up for the surrounds. Especially true with a small room.

 

[king3pj]

Well, there is a difference between encoding a disc in DD 5.1 and actually putting in any surround information. An awful lot of material I watch is jarring when the 10 seconds of surround comes on. Home Theater magazine used to publish reviews that had a 7.1 map which they would color red, yellow or green, depending on how effectively the various channels were utilized. What amazed me was not so much how few had really active rears, but the high number that were primarily mono these days with everything coming out of the center.

You are about right on channel encoding over cable, but in my experience, the Game of Thrones examples tend to be the exceptions.

Still, I did not recommend staying away from 5.1. I said put that 7.1 money into better mains and center, and depending on the material the guy preferred, he might even want to go 3.0/3.1 and save up for the surrounds. Especially true with a small room.

I stopped at 5.1 because I agree with you. I originally wanted 7.1 but after looking at what was actually available with 7.1 sound I decided to put the money for those last 2 speakers into making everything else a little better.

Since I don't have 7.1 I can't really speak to what they actually include in the surround rear speakers. I will say that all of my Blu-ray disks have at least some activity in the surround side speakers even if it is just background music. Like you said, some have much more surround activity than others.

You are also right about general TV. I mentioned Game of Thrones and Walking Dead because those were the first two shows that came to mind when I think of good surround sound. Lost was another show that did it right. The NFL is another thing that just sounds better in 5.1 to me. I should have been more clear when talking about that because it really does come down to what you are watching. If you spend a lot of time watching Food Network or HGTV you're not going to get any surround activity even if your receiver says it is 5.1 because it doesn't make sense for that content.

I always leave my AVR on when watching TV. I bought it for the home theater aspect with Blu-ray. TV that has good 5.1 is a nice bonus but for the most part general TV isn't going to give you what movies will though.

I am also a big gamer and I will say that 5.1 sound really helps in gaming as much as it does for Blu-ray. It gives you a whole level of immersion that gamers without 5.1 are missing.

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[king3pj]

I stopped at 5.1 because I agree with you. I originally wanted 7.1 but after looking at what was actually available with 7.1 sound I decided to put the money for those last 2 speakers into making everything else a little better.

Since I don't have 7.1 I can't really speak to what they actually include in the surround rear speakers. I will say that all of my Blu-ray disks have at least some activity in the surround side speakers even if it is just background music. Like you said, some have much more surround activity than others.

You are also right about general TV. I mentioned Game of Thrones and Walking Dead because those were the first two shows that came to mind when I think of good surround sound. Lost was another show that did it right. The NFL is another thing that just sounds better in 5.1 to me. I should have been more clear when talking about that because it really does come down to what you are watching. If you spend a lot of time watching Food Network or HGTV you're not going to get any surround activity even if your receiver says it is 5.1 because it doesn't make sense for that content.

I always leave my AVR on when watching TV. I bought it for the home theater aspect with Blu-ray. TV that has good 5.1 is a nice bonus but for the most part general TV isn't going to give you what movies will though.

I am also a big gamer and I will say that 5.1 sound really helps in gaming as much as it does for Blu-ray. It gives you a whole level of immersion that gamers without 5.1 are missing.

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Sorry. Double post.


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[mike123abc]

Theaters are usually 7.1, but they use multiple speakers for each of the 7 locations. Unless your screen is really big you are not going to need more than one at each location.

 

[jayn_j]

Theaters are usually 7.1, but they use multiple speakers for each of the 7 locations. Unless your screen is really big you are not going to need more than one at each location.

This is true, but theaters have enough depth that they can separate ambient side surrounds from discrete rear surrounds. Again, in a small room, the side ambience speakers end up getting placed very near the rears, and that pretty much negates the effect.

 

[king3pj]

Theaters are usually 7.1, but they use multiple speakers for each of the 7 locations. Unless your screen is really big you are not going to need more than one at each location.

Plus theaters are built to be the ultimate place to watch a movie. They need to have 7.1 available for those movies that do support it. I'm not saying there is no case to be made for 7.1 sound in a home theater. If you want to mimic the theater experience as closely as possible in your home 7.1 is probably something you would want.

There are plenty of movies that support it but most don't. After finding that out in my research I decided to skip the last 2 speakers and spend a little more everywhere else. I did make sure the receiver I bought supported 7.1 both for surround rears and front highs in case I ever decide I want to round out my system with 2 more speakers. So far after about two years with this setup I am still happy.


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[mike123abc]

Actually I should have said really big room vs big screen. You have to have a room big enough to spread out the 7.1, and a giant room to think about more than 1 speaker per location.

 

[madmadworld]

Is it possible to have too many speakers?

no

 

[jayn_j]

Is it possible to have too many speakers?

no

Yes, but then you are called a hoarder when you reach a point where you can't clear a path anymore.

 

[teachsac]

Is it possible to have too many speakers?

no

Yes. Too many speakers in a small space and you lose separation, particularly in the surrounds and rears.

S~

 

[navychop]

Just to beat this to death:

I have a 7.1 system. True, 7.1 source material is rare. But 5.1 can be expanded into 7.1. Also true is where a little genuine 5.1 is suddenly injected into a movie being jarring.

You made the right choice, IMHO. I think the center is the most important speaker, perhaps followed by the sub. I was stunned at how much better my AQ was when I got a good center. Much clearer.

BTW, I wish more programming used 5.1 - I think I'd like hearing bacon sizzling all around me on a cooking show.

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[madmadworld]

Yes. Too many speakers in a small space and you lose separation, particularly in the surrounds and rears.

S~

balance dude :hippie: