Speaker/Reciever advice please

[Zack Mort]

Hello everyone,

I posted this in the 'basic' forum, but I believe it may belong here instead. See below.

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I'm new to the forum and I've spent the last couple of days reading the basics of HT info. Very useful stuff.

I am going to be moving into a new apt. and I want to get a new HT system. I have a budget of about $1000-$1500. I will probably use it for watching movies and for listening to music in equal proportions. I've looked at a couple of electronics stores, but the best deal I could find was the system I mentioned above. It includes the following:

--Yamaha 630W 6.1-channel home theater receiver,
--JBL surround system with two 3-way floor speakers with dual 6" PolyPlas woofers,
--JBL two 2-way wall-mountable bookshelf speakers with 4" PolyPlas woofers,
--JBL 1 center-channel speaker with dual 5" PolyPlas woofer cones,
--JBL 250W 10" front-firing subwoofer

The room it will be placed in is a med-large living room (18 1/2' X 15').

The total cost of the system above is $1300. I would appreciate any comments or advice anyone could offer about this setup.

Thanks in advance.

Zack

 

[Arthur S]

I would not make price the determining factor in your decision making. Far and away the most important element of your system will be the front left and right speakers. After the front L&R I would rate the center channel the next highest priority. Subwoofer next. You can get a good receiver for $250. Almost anything will do as surrounds.

Of course, I have no experience with the speakers you mention. Comparing speakers is very difficult if only because most showrooms do not gain match them.

Back in the day, my favorite store had all the speakers wired to a panel. There was a pushbutton switch on a 25 foot cord. When you wanted to compare any 2 speakers, you turned a knob on the panel till the loudness was as close as you could get and then backed off to a reasonable listening distance and switched back and forth. I got a really good idea of what the different speakers sounded like.

The human brain interprets louder as better. If speaker A is 1.5 db louder than speaker B, your brain will tell you A is better.

Hope this is of some use.

Artie