Ramblings on upgrade paths and thoughts on 7.1 surround. Gimme your $0.02 (1 Viewer)

[Vietor]

So as I sit here surrounded by my Paradigm Titans, Onkyo TX-DS595, and SA-WM40, I can't help but do what many others have done before me, think of The Upgrade. The thought is that what I have now is good enough to keep me happy until it can change into what I really want. But this can lead to some pretty absurd situations it seems.
I, like many of you, don't want to waste my money, each incremental upgrade represents a loss of money, because you are buying something that you plan to sell at a loss. Thus its most cost effective to go strait to what you want, provided you can afford it. However as is the nature of things you can probably only afford it one piece at a time.
I have in my mind the vision of my perfect system (constantly updated as I learn new things), portions of it are undefined but it runs something like Outlaw 950, VMPS (Ribbon Neo 2 (mains) http://www.vmpsaudio.com , SVS 16-46+ (or two), suffice to say it is far beyond my current system. However upgrades would happen a few parts at a time. The SVS first, this is no problem. But here is where I get to the crux of the matter (arn't you glad?)
At some point I would end up with something like this. . .
Outlaw 950
VMPS Ribbon neo 2
VMPS LCR (not on website yet, improved center)
Some sort of three channel amp (unknown at this point)
SVS 16-46+
And now the odd part. . .The filler of the 7.1 would be 4 paradigm titans driven by the 595 using the multichannel in. This would obviously be a temporary situation. But what do you guys (and gals) thik of such a situation? Where one part of a system is orders of magnitude better then another?
Another thought. In a 7.1 channel setup, what is the relative importance of each channel? Meaning how much will you notice a better speaker? I am ignoring the sub for the moment.
The mains are obviously primary followed closely by the center because thats where most of the action is. But what about the sides and rear surrounds? Are the of equal importance? Do the sides get more action then the rears? Is it totaly dependent on the source to the point where no generalizations can be made?
If incrimental upgrades were made to the mains would it be feasable to just shuffle things back in the system? Old mains become new sides or surrounds? It seems like there would be nothing wrong with that, am I missing something?
Well thats enough of a late night ramble for me, What do other people have planned for their upgrade paths? Or ideal (possible) systems?
-Vietor

 

[John Garcia]

I don't mean to plant a seed, but the first upgrade, if I were you, would be Mini Monitors as mains, and maybe a CC370 center. I had 4 Titans, and after doing an extensive A-B, I swapped out the front Titans for Minis and I am very pleased. The rears are less important, but they should still be of relative quality and should be able to handle a fair amount of bass - at least in the 50-60Hz range.

Originally, I had Atoms as rears, and something seemed to be missing, even with them set to small, so I moved to Titans all the way around with a noticable improvement.

Since the rears don't really need to be as accurate as the mains, one can spend a bit less on them. Keeping all 4 rears relatively matched to eachother, and somewhat timbre matched to the fronts should work just fine. The Titans and Minis seem to blend much better than I expected for the difference in tweeter and mid, so I didn't feel the need to swap out the rears for Minis also.

In my upgrade path, I will likely pick up Monitor 5s as mains, and move the Minis to the rear, so yes I think upgrading mains and rotating what is up front now to the rear is a good idea.