Surrounds - Build or Buy??

[JamesB77]

Last year I built a set of Dayton RS TMWW Mains and WTMW Center. I switched out the mid and tweeter for Seas Millinneum. I now need some surrounds to go with them and have a couple of options.
1) design and build both rear and side surrounds.
2) buy the Triad Inwall Bronze for the rear and side surrounds.
3) design the rear surrounds and buy the Triad for the side.

So, any advice on which way to go? I would need quite a bit of help designing surround speakers.

[Bear]

Design surrounds as if you were designing your main speakers. Targeting a lower max SPL is fine (i.e., you can go smaller). No need to go with dipole or bipole surrounds from the 1995 - 2005 era. Most movie content is mixed using direct radiators, and all multi-channel music is mixed with direct radiators in mind.

[fbov]

+1 but with a note that while lower max SPL is fine, you should aim for equivalent sensitivity to your mains.

Modern AVRs with room correction SW like Audyssey will level-match your speakers to the least sensitive. If that's a low-sensitivity, low power handling surround, you'll always blow that speaker first. Thankfully, if your surrounds are in-wall, and your mains free standing, the BSC difference is on your side. This means a TM based on the same RS drivers, but without BSC, will have similar sensitivity to a TMWW with BSC.

Finally, why are you talking about rears? They're a nice idea in a commercial theater (long, skinny room), but have no rightful place in most home theater.
- all your program is 5.1 with a very sparse set of exceptions in BD.
- human hearing is forward/side focused, not rear
- if you're going to synthesize a channel (i.e. anything 6.1-13.2), do it up front where you'll notice a difference. I run 7.1 with wide fronts.

And that's not my opinion, but rather the conclusion of many researchers in the field.

Have fun,
Frank

[JamesB77]

Thanks for the reply's guys. I've done some more reading as well and have decided direct radiating is the way to go.

[Hank]

Buy? Buy?? Perish the thought! :nono:
I've had side bipoles for a few years and received lots of compliments on their effectiveness, but haven't researched recent comparisons to direct radiating.