A few speaker questions

[Grandpaw]

First question.... I would like to know if I had a matched set of five speakers to mount on the wall would the sub woofer need to match also or just be of good quality?

Next question.....Do speakers mounted on the wall give better surround sound on your home theater than floor towers? Does the fact that they could be mounted higher on the wall make you get better sound effects?

[N. Abstentia]

No a subwoofer does not have to match, as long as it produces the sound you want.

Generally I've found that wall mounting is one of the worst things you can do. Speakers do not like to be close to a wall, and mounting them there gives you zero options to adjust for imaging/soundstage.

[kexodusc]

N. Abstentia nailed it, pretty much.

Subwoofers operate at a completely different frequency range than the rest of your speakers so you aren't really matching them anyway. And don't listen to any salesguy or company that tells you they've "timbre matched" a 10" or 12" subwoofer to a 5-1/2" or 6-1/2" woofer in a speaker. That's BS.

As for wall mounting, well, if you do it right, it's every bit as good an idea for surround speakers as floorstanding/stand-mounted speakers. Buy a good wall bracket that is adjustable so you can position the speakers accordingly. Dolby and DTS recommend your surround speakers be around 5 to 7 feet above the floor ( or 2 to 3 feet above ear level). Hard to position a floorstander that way.

But avoid wall-mounted speakers that are designed to rest flush against a wall or can't be adjusted once mounted. That's where you run into problems. The exception to this is the dipole or bipole speakers designed for surround sound. Those are designed to work when flush mounted to a wall.

And don't wall mount your front front main speakers. Especially if your system is used to music as much as movies.

Wall mounting the center channel is okay only if the speaker was designed with wall mounting in mind. Most speakers aren't. Sometimes you'll get a bit of a rise in the midrange response somewhere between 300 and 800 Hz that can really be annoying , especially with vocals.

[Grandpaw]

The speakers I have sound excellent on music but just don't give me the effects that the Definitive Mythos Gems gave me when I listened to them at the store. My room at home is about the same size as the room I listened to the Definitives in at the store.

He used Pearl Harbor to demonstrate the speakers, so I rented the same movie so I would be listening to the same identical tracks with both speakers. The difference was very noticeable. With the Definitive Gems there was much more sound coming from all directions. I told my wife it sounded like I was inside something like a huge basketball with speakers on every square inch of the inside of the ball. I was hearing sounds coming from literally every direction. All of the speakers in the store were about six feet off the floor and mine at home are floor towers.

The speakers I have at home listed at the time I purchased them for.....
Fronts I have two Infinity Kappa 7.1 floor standing speakers MSRP $799 ea
Rear are two Infinity Kappa 6.1 floor standing speakers MSRP $699 ea
Center channel is a Infinity IL 36C MSRP $500
Sub is a Infinity SSW212 with built in 300 watt amp $1595

The Definitive Gems I was looking at were $249 ea Two for the front & two for the rear
The center was Mythos sSeven $350 ea

I give you this information only to show that the speakers I currently have are quality speakers but the just don't compare to the effects I was hearing with the smaller speakers setting much higher and I cannot figure out why.

The main difference I could see was that the speakers in the store was elevated.

Can any of you help me understand what the differences are.