New to Home Theater - setup help (1 Viewer)

[Dave Moritz]

While there are plenty of great speakers out there Klipsch being one of them. The Klipsch should work out great for you being very efficient and not needing as much power to drive like others have mentioned. And since they are more efficient the lower power rating on on the receiver shouldn't be as big of an issue unless you love to turn it up really loud. But that is one of the issues with all lower end receivers is that they love to rate the power at one or two channels only and usually at 1KHz not from 20Hz - 20KHz. This lets them show a higher power rating that looks good on paper and alot of people fall for it. If you do not listen really loud and do not drive your receiver hard this set up should work out nicely for you. Make sure to run the Audyssey in a really quite room then go through your setting making sure your speakers are all set to small. Start off setting your crossover to 80Hz and then measure the distance from your speakers to the main listening area. Then double check your distance settings Audyssey set. Change to the correct distance if Audyssey got it wrong. Don't be afraid to spend some time tweaking settings to get the best sound you can. And even from someone like me running Klipsch speakers it would be hard to say how it will sound in your room. Even if someone had the same receiver and same speakers the room difference between you and someone else is a big equation. The size & shape of the room, speakers, speaker placement and subwoofer placement does make a difference. I would however have gone with a matching Klipsch speaker instead of the B&W which is a good speaker as well but not as efficient. As you increase the volume it will not be as loud as your other Klipsch speakers so you may or may not hear the Atmos effects very well. I ran into the same issue myself since the speakers that are now pulling Atmos duty where my surrounds before getting the Klipsch center and rear speakers.

If you can still return the B&W I would and get the Klipsch. B&W again are very good speakers but the receiver you went with IMHO would not have enough to drive all B&W's as well as all Klipsch.

This is what I am running myself:

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Hmmm... interesting point about (substantial) mismatch in efficiency between speakers, @Dave Moritz.

Hadn't really thought of that before, but then again, I've never considered mixing speakers w/ rather significant diffs in efficiency.

I suppose calibrating them to match at one reference level might not yield a good enough match at other levels, including the various dynamics away from that "reference"...

Hmmm... now, I wonder how my old, mondo, inefficient, very hard-to-drive Thiel CS 5i's would fit into an HT setup that has more normal speakers for all the other surround channels, except the Thiel MCS1 center... but sadly, I may never know...

_Man_

 

[Dave Moritz]

There is also the tonal difference between the B&W and the Klipsch I forgot to mention.