help with basement speaker placement please

[steveandlisa123]

Hello,

I am new to this forum and have done some searching, but thought these questions warranted a new post. I've also posted in hometheaterforum.com, so for folks who check out both, I apologize for the duplication.

We moved into a home with a basement that is prewired for surround in the ceiling. (4 locations for the front and rears.) Since my Boston Towers (T930) are too big for our family room, I'd like to use them in the basement for music and fronts for HT. I have a Boston Sat7 Center speaker as well and a cheapo sub that I'll eventually replace.

My questions are these: I'd like to only use the rear ceiling prewires and possibly install AudioSource 6 1/2" rounds there. The ceiling is 8' tall. Will it be wierd to have mains on the floor (center at ear level) and rears from above and slightly behind? I like the clean look of the ceiling rears (plus it stops my toddler boys from messing with them) but I love the sound of my Boston 930s too much to replace them with ceiling front speakers.

Also, Since the basement is "floating" - i.e. it has a subfloor suspended above the concrete - I assume a downfiring sub would work fine?

I have the option of using two receivers - my old Yamaha RV 1105 which is currently on the main floor handling 2 channel stereo, or a newer Yamaha RX v550 that I just picked up on clearance. It is 6.1 channel, and newer, but perhaps less quality for music???

thanks and best wishes

Steve Cuss
stevecuss@yahoo.com

[paul_pci]

Perhaps this will be an unsatisfactory answer, but one element that will be adversely affected by having the rears in the ceiling and towers in front is imaging from movies and/or multichannnel music because not all the speakers will be at the same height. Now, that is also a subjective aspect, as some people don't mind the imbalance on imaging and others do. If you have the money (or find a good return policy), you could experiment with ceiling versus stand mount rears for the material you will most listen to and then decide if which setup is right for you.