Similar speaker brands

[canuck1995]

Is there any real noticeable difference in the sound of a home theater when using similar speaker brands vs mix brands?

The premise are as follows
1) We will be using a high end 7.1 Yamaha receiver.
2) The speakers will always be in pairs (I'll give my setup as an example).
Front (3-Way Pioneer Tower)
Surround (Northridge Series JBL Bookshelf)
Back (Sony 2-way Bookshelf)
Presence (Quest 2-Way Bookshelf)
Center (Quest 2-Way)
3) All speakers have the same impedance (8 ohms).

What I'm trying to do now is to find out if its worth getting rid of my current speakers in order to buy a set of similar brands (I'm looking at polk audio, athena, pioneer or jbl).

Thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions.

[mixadude]

Is there any real noticeable difference in the sound of a home theater when using similar speaker brands vs mix brands?

The premise are as follows
1) We will be using a high end 7.1 Yamaha receiver.
2) The speakers will always be in pairs (I'll give my setup as an example).
Front (3-Way Pioneer Tower)
Surround (Northridge Series JBL Bookshelf)
Back (Sony 2-way Bookshelf)
Presence (Quest 2-Way Bookshelf)
Center (Quest 2-Way)
3) All speakers have the same impedance (8 ohms).

What I'm trying to do now is to find out if its worth getting rid of my current speakers in order to buy a set of similar brands (I'm looking at polk audio, athena, pioneer or jbl).

Thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions.

Well you have posed the essence of the ultimate "expanding to HT" question.

I use the flagship pioneer receiver, the vsx-59TXi receiver that has a 1 octave available for every speaker. I have a bunch of way older stereo speakers, but have chosen an Infinity (Beta -360) center channel unit to equate to my old Pioneer DSS-9 mains that I'm keeping for now. With some EQ it works OK.

As for the rest of it, some venerable old stereo units (AR-3as) make up the rest of my system, with some recent subs and basic HQ HT gear to fill it out.

Sorry about the other gibberish that I edited out, happy July 4th to all

[thekid]

Everything I have read says yes. But I think it is possible to mix and match if the speakers all share the same sound chararistics. (I am sure there are experts on this site who can give more technical definition...) I think it is mostly recommended because it is the easiest way to blend your system so that you have a field of sound rather than individual or groups of speakers producing sounds/drawing attention to themselves which ruins the effect of true surround sound. If to your ear the different speakers "match" then you are good to go. If not you might be able to make some adjustments with the receiver or even positions of the speakers. If that does not do the trick save yourself the hassle and go with a single source.

[kexodusc]

Ideally you'd want all 5 or 7 speakers to be the exact same. If that's not possible (which it often isn't), you want the speakers to be from the same "family" or timbre matched, usually with the same or similar drivers.
IMO, you can mix and match and still enjoy home theater. However, what will happen is that certain sound cues will alter with each different speaker. Let's a say a plane or something is flying around in the movie, and the speakers are creating the sound of the plane flying 360 around you. As it moves from one speaker to the next, the actualy tonality will change. How annoying this is to you might determine how much mixing speakers bothers you. For home theater, not having a matching center channel to go with the front mains drove me crazy, people walking across the room while talking would noticeably sound different, it distracted you from the movie. For the surround speakers, it was less obvious.

[PAT.P]

Kexodusc What would be the difference if some of my speaker have Titanium dome vs aluminium alloy for tweeter and Poly Plas vs Polypropylene for the rest of the drivers .Would it make the sound so off key and different ?Pat.P

[corwin99]

The sound will not be off-key, but the timbre would change. For example.. when you go to a store and they are demoing speakers, they usually have speaker switch box will lets you A-B different speakers while you are there... Imagine while you are watching your home theatre and you hear a plane fly across the screen.. when the plane sound moves from one speaker to the next, it is like switching speakers on that speaker box. Some people may find that distracting.

[GMichael]

I think that everyone will agree that matching speakers are better. But until you do, the higher end, and even some mid Yamahas have the YPAO (Yamaha Parametric room Acoustic Optimizer) system. This will help modify the sound coming from each of your speakers to match as closely as they can.

[canuck1995]

Yes, I did notice changes in tonal qualities with the different speakers that I have, even after setting it up using the YPAO of the Yamaha. I finally got the mic from yamaha, it's a tiny yet incredible piece!

Browsing here and there, I've also read that as long as the front and center speakers are the same it would be fine since the surround and rear channels cater to another part of the sound field anyway. With this in mind, what would you guys recommend as a good center/front speakers? I have a budget of $600. I would love to hear about speakers that cost much lesser but nevertheless would be good for a home theater. I'm not really a fan of those sets (5.1 etc). I'd love to keep my northridge JBL's and 3-way pioneer so anything that would blend with them would be great.

[PAT.P]

Yes, I did notice changes in tonal qualities with the different speakers that I have, even after setting it up using the YPAO of the Yamaha. I finally got the mic from yamaha, it's a tiny yet incredible piece!

Browsing here and there, I've also read that as long as the front and center speakers are the same it would be fine since the surround and rear channels cater to another part of the sound field anyway. With this in mind, what would you guys recommend as a good center/front speakers? I have a budget of $600. I would love to hear about speakers that cost much lesser but nevertheless would be good for a home theater. I'm not really a fan of those sets (5.1 etc). I'd love to keep my northridge JBL's and 3-way pioneer so anything that would blend with them would be great.

Jbl Northridge does 2 centre channel EC25 and EC35 .Pat.P

[thekid]

If you are really on budget you might want to check them out...... I have for my bedroom HT (18x20) a Sony Center CN-550 2 Sony MB350's for fronts and Sony MB150's for rears. It only cost $350 and left plenty of money for a decent sub to fill it out. I know it is not high-end but they seem to do the trick for a small room. You can hear every cannon ball hit during the fight scenes in "Master and Commander" and they are pretty decent for music. They are easy to find and even thought it is probably sacrilege to mention it on this sight Consumer Reports did rate the as one of the top bookshelf speakers 2 years ago in terms of sound accuracy.

[oddeoowphil38]

I would do everything I could to keep the fronts and the center channel the same. That is, using the same kind and same size of drivers all the same. Hence, the rears can differ somewhat but would at least make sure they are on par with your front stage.

[canuck1995]

Mix and match, looks like I'll be keeping my speakers for a while (unless there is a very reasonable sale of good speakers out there). What I did was to put the Sony center channel with the Pioneers and it really made a difference. Movie dialogues are now much better. I guess that's why Quest speakers are cheap. Also having the YPAO of Yamaha is a real convenience, it removes much of the guesswork in setting up your system.

BTW there is a sale of Athena speakers in Futureshop, from $700 to $329 anybody used them before? How good are they?

[mixadude]

Yeah, good parametrics are definately the way to go. I wish my Pioneer Elite VSX-59TXi had em. When I set up and mix on pro rigs nowadays (it's my occupation for almost 30 years now) I always use parametrics and Smaart Live, an FFT analyzer. I've been using Smaart for about 10 years now. Before that it was White 1/3 oct analyzers, and back in the '70's it was the Altec/Hewlett Packards. I'm somewhat familiar with analysis and it's limitations and strengths over the decades of it's development.

I got really lucky when I chose the beta C360 center for a match to my ~20 year old Pioneer DSS-9 mains. With a minor physical mod it matches my L/R quite nicely. It's set to small, and the mains are set to large The subs take up the slack.

My advice would be to audition a center with your mains before a purchase. A major timbre change probably won't be correctable. In a perfect world there wouldn't be such a thing, but we're not there yet.