Buying new speakers or home theater system (1 Viewer)

[HowardPM]

Right now I got a really junky Kenwood hometheater system, not really upgradeable because of how you have to plug the speakers into the sub, then into the receiver, so I'm doing some shopping for a new one, hopefully around 500 watts and has DTS, but I can't really afford to pay more then 450, (ya I know it wont be great) but better then what I got. So if anyone knows a really good but cheap theater in a box let me know. I was also looking at buying these speakers the Onkyo SKSHT500 if you go to http://www.shoponkyo.com/products.cfm?id=8 you can see them, Circut city has them for 249 dollars, then I figure I'd buy a cheap receiever.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.

 

[Bill Slack]

The reason you need to hook your speakers up that was is that the sub isn't powered. What receiver do you already have?
You can get this: http://www.htdaudio.com/leveltwo51set.html for $500+actual shipping which will upgrade all the speakers, give you a powered sub-woofer and all your speakers will be timbre matched.

 

[HowardPM]

Its just the receiver that game with my theater in a box, Its the Kenwood VR-406

 

[Bill Slack]

That's a fine low-end receiver. You would defiantley be best served with a speaker (and powered sub) upgrade better than the receiver upgrade you listed above.

 

[HowardPM]

Thanks for the information. One other thing, if I get new speakers and keep my old kenwood receiever (which I don't think is so great) won't it defeat the purpose of having good speakers, if it can't handle them.

 

[Phil_Lunar]

if I get new speakers and keep my old kenwood receiever (which I don't think is so great) won't it defeat the purpose of having good speakers, if it can't handle them.

Actually if you want to get better performance for a low price, use and old 2X100 stereo if you got one(or buy one used a flea market). Assuming that your receiver got a sub .1 preout, and use it to turn your passive sub into a powered sub.

I personnaly have a Kenwood VR-410 and a kit of kenwwod speaker with a passive 8' sub and when I first plugged the system like you with the sub getting the 2 front speaker wire, I was getting pretty poor performance not much bass and since the sub was using lot of power from the receiver, the rest of the speakers were suffering from it.

then someday, I've decided to try my old Pionner stereo receiver passing it the preout sub channel to act as a power amp for the sub. What a difference it make!

now I can get very loud deep bass and all my 5 surround speaker are cristal clear and give me sharp strong sound!

My friends and I are totally blown away by the quality of my HomeTheater sound system.

the best thing is that my system cost me only 399$ for the VR-410 receiver and the 6 speakers(was a demo custom build kit at Future Shop, a Steal if you ask me) and add it my Pionner amp that certainly dosen't worth much than 60$ and bang! I got an incredible system for a low price.

I recently got to some good audio shop to listen to better speaker and receiver(paradigm, JBL and Axiom with denon and yamaha amp) and I dosen't see much improvement from my system that worth paying 5 time my system price.

so give it a try, you might be surprised how good your receiver will sound ouce you get him rid of that big watt sucking passive sub!