After 15 years of having the living room set up nicely for surround sound, I have finally given in to wifely pressure to rearrange........

I now have the problem of having the front 3 speakers a bit too close together and too central in the room, ie, it now lacks width across the front channels. I have convinced my better half that there are speakers small enough to mount on the walls, discretely, to give that extra width to the front pair, but I now need some recommendations to follow through with!

Main requirements are, small, inexpensive, easily wall mounted, preferably with a bit of flexibility on the angle they sit at once mounted.......and did I mention small? My front three speakers are somewhat elderly, but still doing a good job, Kef Q55'd & Q95C.

Any help would be appreciated.

Tannoy sfx5.1

http://www.richersounds.com/product/...ann-sfx5.1-blk

Kef eggs.

http://www.kef.com/html/en/showroom/...ers/HTS2001.3/

Cambridge Cubes.

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/produc...-cinema-system

Anthony Gallos.

http://www.anthonygallo.co.uk/

If you are going the satellite route and buying singles/pairs don't forget to budget for a subwoofer, you'll need one.

Some of the more expensive satellites can be found on eBay, worth a look if budget is tight and you don't want bargain basement boxes.

Thanks for those ideas, I will need to see if I can buy them in pairs, as I already have a full 7.1 setup. The problem is that my front three now span only 6ft, with 4ft either end of the room available for more width, which is where I want a pair of little ones.......'presence' speakers they are termed in the Yamaha instruction manual!

Just out of interest how do you plan to hook up these new speakers to your existing system? That could have a bearing on what options are open to you.

Also the other factor to bear in mind is matching the additional speakers sonically to your existing speakers. If the additional speakers sound doesn't match the KEFs you've got already then that could spoil the effect considerably.

So perhaps getting a pair of KEFs would be the better match? Say the Q100's or if that is a bit out of budget the C1s?

Right, fully with you now.

Are the extra speakers going to give you the desired effect?

I've always kept clear of additional speakers if they are not mixed into the original soundtrack or are discrete. I've also had many setups and have found, even though there is more width you don't always get a better sound stage by moving the main speakers further apart or adding additional f/x speakers.

My mains are just over 2m apart and I use a 100" screen, I have plenty of room either side too, but I leave it up to the dispersion of the speakers/decoding to add extra width when it's needed. If you look at cinemas the speakers are behind the screen, not in the front corners of the auditorium.

Certainly don't want to dampen your enthusiasm, in the same respect I wouldn't want to recommend speakers only for them to be waste of money.

The Yamaha has provision for these 'presence speakers'

They are just for ambience, normally positioned high up near the corners of the front wall.

Yamaha call it 'presence technology', assume they will get their info from the left/right speakers, matrixed.

Hmmm interesting.

In that case I would suggest they are hardly going to add anything to the "width" as the OP seems to be wanting. I was getting the impression they were some sort of extension to the main front left and rights.

The problem you have with spacing the front pair too far apart is the "hole in the middle" effect. If you space them too far apart the stereo effect can collapse to a degree and the speakers become two point sources of sound and the illusion of sounds between them lessens, hence the "hole in the middle".

6 ft apart is not really too close. Unless you are sitting way back from the screen. Which could also be compromising your HD viewing experience unless you have some monster telly!

To be honest I would not be bothering. The most I would do is move the speakers about another foot or so apart at most if you really think there is no stereo image between them anymore.

One other factor is that if you crank up the centre speaker volume too high it can also affect the stereo image between the fronts. So it is important to get the balance of these speakers right

Some interesting pointers there, which I will take on board. The amp is a Yamaha RXV1800, and yes it has the presence speaker option (or zone 2/3 instead). The problem is that having had the fronts about 7ft apart, sitting roughly 10ft from the 46in tv, we now have them 5ft apart sitting 12ft from the telly.

Actually, to be precise, we are in the middle of the decorating job, so they will be 5ft apart and 12ft away very soon. The position is restricted by doors either side, so there is no option to move them wider, so I had the notion to put these presence speakers on the top of the door frames, approx. 2ft 6in out from each main front speaker, in case there was not enough front effect width. In addition to the main viewing positions, there are 2 seats in the room which are to the outside of the two main fronts, which would be inside the proposed additional speakers.

Having said all this, they may sound fine when I hook it up in the new position, but if there was any logic in adding them, I wanted to lay the cabling under the floor before we finish that job. If they are likely to be surplus however, I don't want unwanted cable being visible, having gone to much effort to lay 6 lots of QED speaker cables and four coax cables into a trench in a stone floor already!

At this point I am thinking it may just all be unnecessary.....

Well its all set up, 5th between the fronts and I am happy enough with the sound! I think for stereo its not ideal, but the family generally prefer listening to music on the 7 channel stereo setting anyway......

Another question on a related note, ie surround sound, can I use a pair of Mission bipole surround speakers as a pair of surround backs? My other half is not keen on them being so prominent, she wants me to get something smaller for the surrounds and move them to the back.

Any advice???

You can use any speakers you like. You could rip the speakers out of a couple of old transistor radios and hook them up if you wanted to. Whether it stands any chance of sounding OK or not is another matter.

Mission are decent speakers so chances are they will sound OK. As long as their sound quality matches both your ears and the fronts then there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to use them.

The other factor to consider is the efficiency of the speakers. That is the amount of noise they produce for a given signal input. If the two sets of speakers are different in efficiency then the balance between front and rear will be affected. So you may have to tweak the amp's controls to get the levels balanced.