Forget the CX50's... 

Even the cx100's might even be too low power in combo with the Penta's.
You'll need a MCL2p or ML/MCL to power them.

Cheers for the advice, I dont fancy using an expensive pair of "labs" as rears as they don't do a great deal! Hence my thoughts about the smaller passive speakers, I assume that if I play a cd it will only use the pentas? 

Hi Nicky... You would basically need to interface them with an amp of some sort. The slickest way to do it would be to use an MCL2P or an ML/MCL converter - Another option would be to use a hifi amp with din>phono converters although this would mean you would have a seperate volume for the rears which could be irritating.

As far as audio sources go, it would default to speaker 2 (i.e Pentas only), but you can toggle between the different speaker configurations using the Beo4:

LIST>Speaker>1 (Avant speaker), 2(L+R Front), 3 (L+Center+R), 4(Front L+R, Rear L+R), 5(All speakers)

Personally I'd save up for some Lab 4's or preferably 4/6000s.

I think a MCL2p and some CXs will be fine. Tempted to do the same myself. CX50s should be fine - very little bass goes to the rears and you will never have that much power - the MCL2p is only 30W per channel which is more than enough.

My argument is that Lab 4000s used are not that much more than a well-sorted pair of '100s and an MCL2P plus all the cabling etc, but yes it would work fine!

I use CX100's mainly as rear speakers but right now I do use some CX50's as rears till the end of some reno work that's being done in my place.

Notable difference and I can't wait till I can get my CX100's back up and running... they're just a fuller sound and slightly more bass. 
Especially in 'speaker4' mode the difference becomes very quickly clear. Less noticable in surround 'speaker5' mode though.

The MCL2p is more than adequate to power the 6 ohm CX's. 

I've used an MCL2P with S65's on an Avant as rear speakers and it works fine - the only problem was that i then preferred to the S65s to BL4000 and swapped them round, but you should be fine with CX50 or 100's. The other porblem is knowing what speaker type to set them to in the Avant Menu as all the speaker settings are for Beolab speakers 

It would be a good set-up assuming you're not a hard-core surround speaker person! Recently I installed a pair of CX-100's to fill the rear-speaker role of a home-theater system consisting of BeoLab 9's in the front, and BeoVision 10 as the TV. It works fine, but I had to tweak the "speaker level" settings a lot to get a good balance (not too loud, but not so soft that effects can't be heard). They're labeled as BeoLab 4000's, and powered by a BeoLink Passive.

Even though they're placed about 7 feet up the side walls (as recommended by speaker placement guides), I can detect their presence and location relatively easily. Maybe the CX-100's are somewhat directional. It's not perfect, as it doesn't impart that truly "immersive" feel.

Leo

leogenghis wrote:

It would be a good set-up assuming you're not a hard-core surround speaker person! Recently I installed a pair of CX-100's to fill the rear-speaker role of a home-theater system consisting of BeoLab 9's in the front, and BeoVision 10 as the TV. It works fine, but I had to tweak the "speaker level" settings a lot to get a good balance (not too loud, but not so soft that effects can't be heard). They're labeled as BeoLab 4000's, and powered by a BeoLink Passive.

Even though they're placed about 7 feet up the side walls (as recommended by speaker placement guides), I can detect their presence and location relatively easily (which is not ideal). Maybe the CX-100's are somewhat directional.

Leo

Yes they are fairly directional. Try a position closer to listening level...