As I have upgrade and expanded my sound system to focus more on movies and less on music, I have wanted to include surround speakers. I upgraded my towers and added a center channel speaker, as well as a dedicated subwoofer, all Klipsch. When I was upgrading my HDMI cables to 2.1, I went ahead and connected speaker cable to the receiver for rear speakers, so that the basement theater would be ready to add surround sound. I actually already owned two bookshelf speakers that could be used for surround. I bought them probably 20 years ago. I had them briefly setup in my parents basement while I was in high school and college, but they have been sitting in various closets since moving out of my parents house in 2006. Point being, I already had the expensive part of the expansion in my possession.
The big issue with expanding to surround sound then wasn't cost, it was logistics. Specifically, the layout of the room I am using. My theater system is in the basement with a finished ceiling. On one side of the room is the staircase leading upstairs, with a small hallway on the other side of the staircase between it and the wall. Because of this, there was no easy way to route the wire connecting the speaker that sits by the stairs (right rear). I was able to route the wire to the left rear easy enough by allowing the wire to run along the left wall and behind a couch, keeping it out of view. This is why I ran a 4.1 system for a few months. However, once I had the left rear speaker connected, and experienced partial surround, it really motivated me to connect the right rear speaker as well to have full surround.
Since running it through the ceiling wasn't really an option with the finished ceiling, and not having or wanting to add crown molding to my basement, the only other option was to run it under the carpet, which is what I (with the help of Sarah!) did. I had never run anything under carpet before, and thus the idea never occurred to me until my buddy mentioned that he did this at his house to wire speakers. It turned out to be easy enough once we had the right tool, which ended up being a tape measure. We initially tried a fish tape wire guide, but had issues with the guide coiling under the carpet. We ran the wire essentially to the same part of the room as the left rear, but then made a small incision in the carpet and was able to run it under the carpet to reach the location of the right rear with the help of the tape measure.
Despite already owning the two speakers, the project still cost about $200. Fifty dollars were spent for speaker cable, and another $150 were spent for speaker stands. Granted you can buy cheaper speaker stands, but I had some specific requirements I needed for height to reach above a couch. I am glad to have full surround sound now, and I might even add Atmos at some point. With that being said, I've come to the conclusion that the most important speakers in a surround sound setup are the center channel and sub. All of the action and sound that takes place on screen comes from the center channel, and having a good sub for the explosions and low end sound will transform how your system sounds. I think the other speakers are less important for surround. However, if you want to rock out or have good sounding music then the front left and right speakers need to be adequate as well, wether they are bookshelf or towers. I think the surround speakers are the least important as so little sound comes from them compared to the other speakers. This is probably why sound bars improve TV sound so much without the hassle of extra wires and an amp that comes with running surround rear speakers. Since I already had the receiver and speakers, I wanted to go ahead and include the surround sound feature to make my theater more complete. However, when I upgrade my sound in the living room (which is the main area where TV is watched), I'll likely just upgrade the sound bar that I have to a newer 3.1 channel system.
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