Thank you, Steve!

What would the impact be of having two BL8 as left and right for a BS TH and a pair of BL28 as surround?   my BL28 are setup behind the sofa since they project sound better into my living space driven by the BS TH with an additional BL19 for stereo music listening. When watching tv they operate as back or surround speakers depending if I chose a listening position with a pair of BL 17 as surround and the 28 as back. I feel the BL28 performs better when used as surrounds. So I’m thinking adding a pair of 8’s as front L and R. The lack of bass is covered by the BL 19 I think. any advice ?

@syrianos82: This will work well for three reasons. The first is your comment about the Beolab 28s behaving well as surround loudspeakers. The second is that it's smart to have the bigger woofers of the 28s helping to control room modes on the opposite wall from the Theatre. The third is that the "narrow" beam width of the Beolab 8s is narrower than that of the 28s. This means that, for 2-channel stereo listening without the other loudspeakers, they behave very well if you have one chair and no friends. Cheers -geoff

I'm interested in hearing how the Beolab 8 speakers perform as height speakers in a Dolby Atmos setup.

Thank you so much for the reply / confirmation. Just came back from the dealer and ordered a pair of BL8's when finding your message :D   I was a little against moving the BL28 back to the front. Reading your advice solves my doubts and can't wait to play around with the new setup.   Altogether I'll take the BL17's out of the new setup and work with just a mix of BS TH / BL8 / BL 28 / BL19 I notice some more comfort to the sound when offloading the BL28 from the lowest frequencies, correct me if I'm imagining things. Kind Regards

It's not so much "offloading" as it is controlling the room's resonances because the woofers are distributed around the room. A room mode (in one dimension) is like a guitar string. If you want the guitar string to ring as much as possible, you should pluck it in only one place with one fingernail. Similarly, if you "pluck" a room mode with one loudspeaker in one place, then it will ring as much as it can. In the case of the guitar, this is good. In the case of a room, this is bad. So, to "deaden" the guitar, you pluck it with all 10 fingers. Instead of ringing at one note, it will go "thump". If you play bass out of 1o woofers around a room, the room mode can't ring for the same reason - it can't "fight" all those woofers telling it what to do. In other words, in order to control a room's resonant modes, it's better to have a lot of woofers, all working together than it is to have one big woofer. In a perfect situation, you have an infinite number of woofers in the room - but this leaves very little room to sit down...

I can imagine someone must have designed a 'woofer chair' at some point like the iron throne, thanks for the visualization of space complexity though.   have a great Halloween ;)  

Thanks for the comments about the the 8s, 28s and Theatre.   I have a pair of 8s ordered to be used as rears with my Theatre and 28.  Will be replacing the 9s I am currently using as rears.   I want the added height of the 8s and to match the 28s visually.  Never thought of moving the 28s to the rear.   Do plan to keep them in the front as I like the way they look and am guessing I will prefer them for music as opposed to the 8s.

Back in the old-days, I tested a Beovision 11 as the only thing in the front, with a pair of Beolab 9s as the surround speakers. This had some advantages (assuming that you're not interested in listening to 2-channel stereo properly), including

• "hiding" the big speakers on either side of the sofa instead of the front of the room
• two big woofers (better than one subwoofer)
• the woofers were farther apart than they would have been had they been "properly configured" as a stereo pair.

Of course, this also means that the centre channel was non-existent (it's a 4.2 system instead of a 5.1, to be honest) but the Beovision 11's two internal speakers playing a downmixed L+C+R worked just fine!   If you're a fan of weird setups, here's another one if you have a pair of external front loudspeakers and an Eclipse or Harmony (but no surround loudspeakers):

• Set the external loudspeakers to Left- and Right-Front
• Set the centre output on the television to Centre Front
• Set the Left and Right internal outputs of the television to Left- and Right-Surround

If you hate this idea, then don't do it. :-)