What surround sound speakers to get? (1 Viewer)

[96dcmss]

I have an Onkyo receiver, and the living room is wired with speaker wire to 2 rear speakers, 2 fronts, one center, and a sub. I wanted Bose, but that won't work with my wiring. I want clear, sound, even when its loud..... Need something that comes with wall mounts, or has them available. Would prefer white, but black would be ok. I've considered JBL, and Onkyo, but what would you guys recommend for me?


TIA, Jason

 

[gene c]

What are your front and center speakers? Ideally you should get speakers that are from the same brand and series as your fronts and center. But matching the surrounds isn't absolutely necessary so if they don't have anything that works for you then a different model is better than nothing.

 

[96dcmss]

Oh sorry for the confusion....I have no speakers yet, it's just wired for some. I need all five speakers, and sub.

 

[gene c]

After reading your first post I'm not sure why I thought you already had the 3 fronts ?? Anyway, the first thing we need is some kind of a budget. And did you want Bose because of their small size or did you think they were good speakers?


Also, how big is the room? House, apartment, condo? These answers will help figure out how big of a subwoofer you need.

 

[96dcmss]

The room is probably 18' x 19 'or so, with 13' ceiling. It's my house, and the neighbors are 2 acres away, so loud will be fine. I wanted Bose because I thought they sound great. Want to do this for 500-600 bucks, but don't want to get too expensive if I don't have to. I want quality, and want it to last a long time.

 

[gene c]

That's a pretty big room for such small speakers. You're either going to have to get small bookshelves or better satillites. I'm afraid Bose HT speakers aren't very popular on these types of forums. Google "Bose reviews" to find out why.


Newegg.com has pretty good deals on Polk/Monitor series speakers. The Monitor 30's are $119 a pair ( X 2 ) and the CS1 center is $79. That's about $330 shipped for 5 speakers. Add a BIC/V1220 sub from Partsexpress.com for $192 shipped and you're within budget. They have key hole mounts but not wall mounts.


If you want to stick to the smaller satillite type speakers then Polk, Definitive Technology, Harman kardon and Infinity are others to consider as is the Energy/TakeClassic 5.1 speakers are pretty good but the sub would probably be too small for your room. The speakers are available without the sub but are more expensive that way .


Whichever way you decide to go make sure you get a sub that's big enough for your room.

 

[CB750]

Welcome Jason


Today is your lucky day. With a $500 to $600 budget you don't have a enough money to buy a Bose 5.1 speaker system so you can spend your time looking for something better and will spend less money doing so. You will find no fans of Bose cubes around here. You also won't find any professional reviews of Bose speakers because they sued Consumer Reports for a bad review a number of years ago so the pro's won't say anything negative.

I could go on about how the Bass Module is not really a sub because it does not have it's own amp, how the small cube don't produce much mid range frequencies, and that you must connect all of the cubes through the Bass Module. Or how the speakers don't sound as good as they did in the in store demo. But you say that you like the sound of Bose so those things don't matter.

However, here is something that might interest you. Your Onkyo receiver comes with a nice little feature called Audyssey room correction. Its that little microphone that you connect to the front of the receiver and it sets up and calibrates all of your speakers for your prime listening areas. But that nice little feature will not work with Bose speakers because all of the cubes are connected through the Bass module and Audyssey cannot detect them. That means you will have to calibrate you speakers by hand.

My suggestion is to go out and do some listening to see what you can pick up in your budget range. The only thing that is important is how the speakers sound to your ears. Once you find the ones you like see if you can find them on-line to save some money.

 

[96dcmss]

Thanks for all the replies and advice guys. The wife and I are going to go listen to some this weekend.

 

[gene c]

Three things.


1) Stores are horrible places to listen to speakers. Noisey environments .

 

[CB750]

I found that the best listening areas were provided at the Mom and Pop type Audio/Video stores, but they tend to have fewer brands to listen to. Bring some of your favorite music with you and take the time to listen to each brand and how they sound over time. If you do this you will find that one group of speakers will sound better to you than others.

Also don't discount on line retailers but make sure that if you have not listened to the speakers that the seller has a liberal return policy if you don't like they way they perform. Not all sellers will allow you to do that.