Hello all, brand new member here (1 Viewer)

[iLIKEmovies]

Hi, my name is Adam and I'm getting into home theaters more and more. I've always been interested in them and what everyone has and now I am financially able to have my own. My first surround sound was a HTIB from KLH when I was 16. It was a complete piece of shit to say the least. I ended up overheating it because I had stuff piled all over it. I had been without surround sound since as I was researching to find something good. Last year I found a good deal on craigslist and got a Sony str-dg720 7.1 hdmi receiver with some sony HTIB cubes for the surround speakers and a crappy phillips 75w sub. For the front speakers I had some 100w sony bookshelves. Well I'm 23 now and decided for my birthday I wanted to upgrade. I first upgraded the sub to a 250w MTX downfiring 12" (can't find a model number anywhere. Then I bought a brand new sony str-dh820 7.2 receiver and paired it with the onkyo sks-ht540 speakers I found on craigslist w/o the sub. Can I get some opinions on this set up and any upgrades you might suggest. I like sony receivers because the bravia sync works nicely with my ps3 and 32" 720p bravia tv. I would like to upgrade the speakers to floor standing speakers but they all seem to be rated at at least 200w and seeing as my receiver only does 110 per channel i'm not sure it would be necessary. Anyways, like I said I'm new and still trying to learn so I will take any and all advice you have to offer me. Thanks in advance!

 

[Robert_J]

Welcome to HTF. We can handle your upgrade here but it would probably fall better in the Beginner section. This is more for complete room projects.

I would like to upgrade the speakers to floor standing speakers but they all seem to be rated at at least 200w and seeing as my receiver only does 110 per channel i'm not sure it would be necessary.

Ignore the wattage on both speakers and your receiver. That rating is the least important on your receiver. If it is over 100w on speakers, then anything else is just insurance that you won't fry them. What are your goals for this system? Does it currently satisfy your listening needs?

 

[iLIKEmovies]

Ignore the wattage on both speakers and your receiver. That rating is the least important on your receiver. If it is over 100w on speakers, then anything else is just insurance that you won't fry them. What are your goals for this system? Does it currently satisfy your listening needs?

I seem to think that I will never be satisfied as there will always be new technology that I want to get my hands on, but I am happy with how it sounds. That being said, I haven't really heard any high-end systems so i guess I am more curious about how I could make improvements on what I have now. I have a brand new receiver and used speakers so that's why I am looking at replacing those. As far as wattage I guess what I mean is how different will 100 watts sound coming out of my bookshelves rated to 130w than 100 watts coming out of large floor standing speakers rated to 200w+?

 

[Robert_J]

Power ratings have nothing to do with how the speaker will sound. Look for sensitivity. It will be in decibels at 1 meter when a single watt of power is applied to the speaker. The higher the better. Look for a wide frequency response and small deviation. You want 20hz to 20,000hz at + or - 3db. Cheap speakers won't give a deviation because it could vary by 6db or 12db. Those are huge peaks and valleys. How low does your sub play? Have you properly integrated it into the system? Finally, does your receiver have an automatic calibration? Use it if it does.

 

[iLIKEmovies]

Ok, well looks like the frequency response is 55 Hz-50 kHz and the sensitivity is 86 dB/W/m for the speakers. As for the sub, I haven't been able to find any model number on it so i did a quit search of what notation it did have on it and found this: http://www.mtxaudio.ru/manuals/SW1.pdf My sub looks very similar to this but it says 180 watts instead of 100. I have used the auto calibration per the instructions but I'm not exactly sure how to dial it in properly with the other speakers beyond that.