Looking for advice on home theater front speakers (1 Viewer)

[Rkmcdon]

I have a home theater set up with a denon 3802 reciever and i'm looking to buy new front towers and center channel. My surround speakers are in wall Klipsch reference series, but i'm willing to have my front speakers not timbre matched to my surrounds if it allows me to get better fronts. I also have a 10" powered sub to pick up the low end. The system is almost exclusively for movies.

The 3 speakers HAVE TO BE less than $1500 total and preferably less than $1400.

I'm far from a speaker expert so i did some searching and discovered 2 sets of speakers that seem to fit the bill. Unfortunately, neither are speakers that I can audition and in fact, my local store options for auditioning speakers is limited to Best Buy or one "boutique" store with a very limited selection. The current candidates are:

Wharfedale Diamond Series (wildwestelectronics.com is the only place i could find to purchase these)
9.6 floor speaker
9.cm center channel
Total price $1080

or

Aperion Intimus 5 Series (can be found at aperionaudio.com)
5T tower
5C center channel
Total price $1340

(I had links to each speaker but unfortunately the site won't allow me to post links since i'm a new poster)

I'm mostly interested in getting the best sounding speakers. If you have any knowledge of or opinion on either sets, or if you have another set in this price range you think I should look at, your input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Rkmcdon]

I thought i'd add, if i go with Klipsch I'd be looking at:

RF-82 Towers
RC-62 Center Channel
Total price of $1450

The only option I'd have to audition these would be a BB Magnolia store that is a little over an hour away, but i may try to make it up there this weekend.

Also, i just discovered that a local store is supposed to carry paradigms. I'm going to check them out this weekend. I don't know the prices yet, but i was thinking something along the lines of:

Paradigm Monitor 9 Towers
CC-290 Center Channel

Any thoughts?

 

[Dingiswayo]

I have a friend with Aperion speakers and he loves them. I haven't been over to hear them, however.

Also if you want to get the Klipsch but save some money then Saturday Audio has the RF-35 for $600 (look halfway down the page). I searched for differences and didn't come up with much. A couple people on the Klipsch forums said they couldn't hear the difference between the 35s and the 82s. According to the Klipsch website they are all timbre matched, so you could still get the same center (which of course is the most important speaker). You could then put your savings towards a bigger sub, since your setup is geared towards movies (maybe sell your current sub as well and get something mind-blowing).

Personally I'm a fan of Bowers and Wilkins speakers, but that's just me. People do swear by the Klipsch tweeters.

 

[Rkmcdon]

Those RF-35's do seem fairly similar for less. Thanks for the link.

For now though, i'm probably going to hold off on a new sub. I'm pretty happy with my current sub and bigger subs seem to get expensive quickly.

 

[Raymond lee Leggs]

remember to spend more on your fronts than your rears.

 

[Leon Liew]

Go for the Klipsch be it the 35s or 82s.I am using the RF7 Fronts,RC25 Center,
RSW12 sub and the Quintet series fronts as surrounds and they are flawless.
As long as they are from the same brand it will match.

As for the Klipsch even music sounds fantastic let alone HT.

 

[Rkmcdon]

Thanks Leon.

I went out of town this weekend and found a couple of home theater stores. I wasn't able to audition the paradigms but i did get to listen to the Klipsch RF-82's with the RC-62 center. They sounded good, definitely better than my current speakers, but something seemed to be missing. I haven't (can't) auditioned many speakers, so i couldn't quite put my finger on what the problem was. But as i said, they were definitely better than my current speakers.