RF-3s for Rear Surrounds? Question about finishing off my HT.

[sethhobrin]

Hello!

Currently I have:

2 x RF-3s

1 x RC-62

2 x RS-52s

2 x KSB 1.1s

1 x HSU VTF3 Mark III Sub

I was thinking about picking up some RF-82s to replace my RF-3s. If I do this what do you guys think about moving the RF-3s to replace the crummy KSB 1.1s? Has anyone done floorstanders as Rear Surrounds or Surrounds? Also if I did do this what would I do for crossovers and speaker configuration?(Large or Small)

[Zen Traveler]

Welcome to the Forum sethhobrin.

I use RF-3's as side surrounds (see below) and they are killer. [H] I prefer them over the RB-75's and the RS-7 WDST speakers. YMMV.

[falcon20x]

Tkdamerica,

I'm curious about your room, how big is it to have that many speakers?

You are showing RF 3 on the  A channel and the RS 7 on the B channel , I will assume that the RB's are powered by  the rear channel  outpout from the amp . If  this is correct, what would be the avantage?

Is it to run the A channel for music and the B for movies?

[Zen Traveler]

My room is approximately 14'x21' (2300 cu. ft.). The Denon allows for both A and B surrounds along with 2 rear surrounds. I prefer running the RF-3's for music and before my AVR 4802R was damaged, I liked playing both A & B surround for action movies. Right now I have a Denon AVR 3805 driving my HT and It is not powerful enough to drive both surrounds--In fact, I switched my RF-3's out for a pair of RB-75's that I am using until my replacement Denon AVR 4806 comes in.

[schwock5]

After upgrading to the RF7s up front and the RC 7 for the center, I moved my old RF-35s to my rear corners and my RC-35 to my rear center.

Like TKDAMERICA, I have my Denon 3805 diving both the RS-35s on my sides, and my RF-35s in my rear corners as my surrounds, and the Denon driving the RC-35 as my rear surround back center.

I used a seperate 200x2 watt amp for my RF-7s to relieve some of the work of the Denon 3805, and to bring out everything I could from the RF-7s for 2 channel music.

The Denon set-up allows the user to have the Denon automatically use the A surrounds, B surrounds, or A+B surrounds for different inputs into the reciever.

I have it set so Dolby Digital and DTS movie soundtracks use A+B automatically (RS-35 and RF-35)

Dolby Digital and DTS music soundtracks use only B automatically (RF-35s)

and EXT-IN which is my Denon Link for SACD / DVD-Audio use only B for 5.1 channel music automatically (RF-35s)

As for crossovers and speaker configuration, I have RF7s set to Large, and RF-35s set to large.

I had my RC-7 set to small, but then voices sounded like they all had extra lower end echo on them, I think because the RF-7s were picking up the low end, and since no one relaly speaks that low, I set the RC-7 to large and it sounded much better.

I have no subwoofer, so Essentially my RF-7s pick up the lower end of my system, and I have my crossover set to 80.

I also just noticed last night after re-calibrating, that the Denon test signal had the surrounds at a slightly different volume than the THX optimizer on some of my DVDs. After setting everything to 85db on the Denon test, i threw in finding nemo to calibrate it from a "real world source", and the surrounds were much lower, so I adjusted them higher accordingly, i also find setting surrounds higher is better anyway, since the infomration sent to the rears is usually pretty low and most times unnoticable for me.

So far, everything has been working out great, and I am testing a few more discs this week so see if more tweaking is needed.

I would definately siggest this type of configuration to get more out of the surrounds, and it's better for 5 channel stereo music, or multi-channel music. If you have a reciever that can handle it and has good user-friendly options, definately go for it, and i'd say use double surrounds, and use your KSB speakers as surround backs.