need some recommendations on a rear center channel...it will be hung about 10-12 feet off the floor and about 2-3 feet behind the couch pionting down on about a 45 degree angle...is this placement and angle ok or do i need to move it any...does the rear need to be as big as a front channel???

That's really high - it should be about 5-8 feet off the floor and pointed towards the listening position. At that height and distance and angle it would seem to be pointed towards the display and not towards the listening position. If you can't lower it at least point it down more towards the listening position. It doesn't have to be very big - a small bookshelf speaker or center channel will work fine.

Most receivers have distance settings programmable so positioning doesn't matter. Too close, however, will severely limit your optimum listening positions and act like a point source at any volume level you set the rear channel to. Could you position two rear speakers behind your listening area hooked up in parallel? This would widen your usable listening area.

These rear speakers do not have to be large or wide range unless you have listen to a lot of true 6.1 material. The signal is full frequency only on DTS-ES 6.1. Dolby EX puts only a matrix-derived signal similar to Dolby Surround, which is very limited in frequecy range.

I use a single Acoustic Research AR-3a speaker at present, located about 15' behind the listening area which is really nice with DTS-ES 6.1. The side surrounds are AR-LSTII's, which are bipolar located to the sides about eight feet to the left and right.

Good luck.

Richard Boneske

Actually, DTS-ES 6.1 has both a matrixed and discrete version for the extra channel.

And don't wire two speakers in parallel unless you know what you're doing. If you have two 8 ohm speakers wired in parallel the amp will see a 4 ohm load and that may be too low. Newer receivers and amps have 7 amplified channels so you can use two rear surround speakers. Or you could take the pre-amp out to a separate two channel amp for dual rear surrounds.

I've had luck in some applications with placing the rear speaker on the ground, facing straight up. This is supposed to be non-localized background sound, so you can sometimes get away with that. Obviously, it depends entirely on your particualar situation, but I wanted to at least suggest the alternative.

As far as the speaker itself? IMO it just needs to match the other speakers in terms of quality. I wouldn't put a $3000 MK SS250P with a HTIB setup. I've heard that using a center channel speaker with a wide dispersion pattern works well, but I haven't tried that myself (yet).