Audio Home Theatre Setup: Front Bookshelf Speakers can be used as rear speakers?

[xerocool]

Ok here's the deal, I have a pair of nice Aiwa front bookshelf speakers that I've been using satisfactorily for a number of years- they're loud and have a pretty good range of frequencies. However, I'm looking to upgrade my 2.1 system to a 5.1 by through a little piece-mealing by buying two JBL towers.

So here's question- can I use my old front bookshelf speakers and put them in the rear as rear speakers? Personally I don't think this should be an issue since it's just wiring the speakers differently, but I was wondering if there was a cap on the power my reciever delivers to the back speakers (I hear underpowering a speaker is the worst thing you can do to it), or any other small subtleties that I don't know about.

Thanks for any help you guys!

 

[DaveSimmons]

It should work fine. You'll just need to set your speaker size to "small" for the rears and "large" for the front towers, so the receiver knows to send less bass their way.

I use a pair of Polk bookshelves as my rear speakers and they work perfectly. Explodalarity has yet to ensue.

 

[MustISO]

There shouldn't be any problem at all. I've never seen a receiver that powered the rears differently than the fronts. At least not in the last 5 or 6 years.

 

[edelbrock]

I have been upgrading my speakers for years that way. Old speakers go to the surround channels. I finally bought a 7.1 reciever to utilize some speakers I had sitting around.

 

[xerocool]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
It should work fine. You'll just need to set your speaker size to "small" for the rears and "large" for the front towers, so the receiver knows to send less bass their way.

I use a pair of Polk bookshelves as my rear speakers and they work perfectly. Explodalarity has yet to ensue.

ok, so i do have to tweak the input to the speakers a bit at the reciever end so i don't end up getting too much sound from the back?

i was kinda wondering about that too, if the signal the reciever was putting out was the same but if front and rear speakers are made differently so the back ones don't overpower the front in loudness...

i'll look into it, afterall that'd suck if the back sounds were too loud and everything seemed right behind me 😛

 

[DaveSimmons]

It's just your receiver's 5.1 setup menu, software not hardware 🙂

1. bass management: If you set speakers to "small" the receiver knows they don't have good low bass response, "large" means they do. If using a subwoofer you might set even the front towers to "small" so their bass goes to the subwoofer.

2. crossover: you can also adjust how much mid-bass and midrange goes to speakers vs. subwoofer (if using one) by setting the low frequency cutoff, typically several choices in the 80-200 Hz range

3. volume: this usuually sends a test tone cycling through speakers one by one, so you can set the levels of them to get the volume to match.

It's doubtful that failing to do this would _hurt_ your bookshelf speakers, the 5.1 sound just wouldn't be as good as it could be.

You receiver manual should explain how to do this.

 

[Pariah]

You can connect any typical HT speakers to any channels you want. If you wanted to connect 5 main towers to the 5 channels, you would be fine. There's no way you can damage your receiver or speakers unless the speakers somehow operate outside the impedance rating of your receiver, which again would not be an issue with any typical consumer level equipment.

As Dave mentioned above, getting the proper volume from each channel is a simple level adjustment which should be explained in your receiver's manual.