floor standing speakers for surrounds?

Bill,

The answer to your question is... it depends. It depends on what you set the crossover of your speakers. If you're crossing over at 60-80 range, full range may be a total waste unless you are totally concerned with absolute timbre matching across all speakers. The general, conventional wisdom is that it is a waste to go "full range". However, the appropriate thing if you have room and $$ is to get the same exact speaker for all your speakers. So, like I said, it depends on your goals and why you are asking. Personally, I'd put the money to full range surrounds and rears into the best possible fronts that I could afford and then get timbre matched bookshelf surrounds with a sub. I do both 2-channel, multichannel music, and also movies. So I want a setup that can appropriately accommodate all with minimal trade offs.

Baranowski

If you have a receiver or preamp with room correction then start with that. I've been using Anthem gear for years. The ARC system crossed over my fronts at 60 and my surrounds at 110hz. That has to do more with the room response with the speakers than anything. So, 80 is a starting point but if you don't have room correction then you need to listen to music at different crossovers and see which sounds better. That is for the fronts. For the rears, 80 is usually excellent. Remember too that if you are listening to movies you want to send the LFE signal to the sub to allow your amp to breathe and better control your speakers above crossover. I wish I could tell you that X frequency is the magic dial but it's not that simple. If you are unsure or starting out then dial in your system at 80 and listen for a month and then you can start playing. I personally don't feel that full range all around offers significant value unless your room is really huge (35x25 and larger) and therefore you need to move more air in the room.

Mtrot is right with one addition, the crossover depends most on where your sub and fronts blend best. With music you generally want the speakers to run as full range as possible an with movies you want to supplement 80hz and below or 60hz and below with a sub. My Anthem allows me to do different crossovers between music ad movies. If your receiver or preamp allows for that ad well then I would start out with 80hz for movies and 60hz for music in your case.

Side channels with the anthem. Rear channels are far less important. The P5 is a very nice amp. I assume you have a better amp for your fronts?

Finally, Star Wars Episode III opening scene is a great test for your surround channels and to make sure everything is working and setup properly.

I missed the note where you said you were using it for the fronts too. That's why I found it odd that you were relegating it to a side channel amp. I didn't know if you were using mono blocks, etc.

Baranowski, I'm getting the sense that you really want floor standing speakers for surrounds. If I'm getting that sense correctly, then go for it. There's no question that deeper bass will be more uniform in the room, crossover will be far lower, etc. etc. There's a big difference with quality full-range speakers vs. bookshelves in a setup. So I say go for it and see how you like it.

As a side-note, Toole's book is great. If you ever want some geeky reading, that's the book to grab.

If the issue is a "fuller" sound then that is a speaker setup issue and not a crossover issue--especially if you are getting good bass at the primary listening position. Are the distances/delays and volume all calibrated properly and if you have rom correction, are you showing any suckouts?

Do you have graphs with your package? Do you have ARC or Audyssey?
Regardless, where is it cutting off your Surrounds for crossover settings?

If you are using an Anthem with ARC, you'll get all the graphs for every speaker. If you are using Audyssey, you won't and you need to upgrade to the pro version (approx additional $750 if your processor supports it).

What crossover are you seeing for the surrounds? Are you manually overriding it?

My hunch (based on the bits of info here and there) is you have one of two things going on:

1) The crossover is off with your surrounds, giving you a dip or problem with the audio spectrum.

2) The placement of your surrounds is off. That can either be they are too far off-axis from your listening position or that they need to be remeasured for distance, etc. Are you using direct or dipoles? This is important because if you are using direct and your processor is assuming dipoles, you don't get the appropriate delay added to the direct radiating.

Any of that jar an idea or resonate with you?

Change the crossover to 110. See how that works. Let the sub do more work. Check with pioneer or the manual on how to setup direct radiating speakers. That may or may not be an issue. Is your speaker setup relative to primary also at the proper angle? Is it between 90-120 degrees or so or is it more?