Newbie with $1500 and a wife pushing for Bose

Let's look at the big picture as a whole rather than piecing individual components together and hoping for the best.

1) How many speakers do you want / need?

2) Does this include a subwoofer?

3) Given your wife's preference for Bose, is it safe to assume that you're looking for "small" speakers? If so, will they be wall mounted, stuck on shelves, etc ???

4) How big of a room do you have?

5) How long would you need speaker cables for each speaker if installed where you think that they will go?

6) Do you have some place to mount the equipment or will you need some type of a rack?

One more question and it is the most important one.

7) Are you against buying used over the internet?

The more info that you can give us, the more appropriate the answers are likely to be. Believe me, would all like to see you get something nice while avoiding the "B" word. Sean
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The following system would provide you with a 6.1 channel DTS compatible home theater system. It would also sound reasonably good on multi-channel music for the money invested. All prices quoted are for new units with full factory warrantees unless listed otherwise. These were random price quotes as found on the net and you can probably do better if you really look around. This is not meant to be the best that you can do for the money, but something that both you and she could enjoy with confidence while keeping things both simple and convenient. The electronics are cosmetically matched and you can use one remote for both the receiver and dvd player.

Receiver: Panasonic SA-HE200 $280 new / $200 refurb
This unit offers pretty good versatility, decent power and reasonable spec's. It can be run in 6.1 mode, 5.1 mode or standard 2 channel stereo. Designed for operation with the increased bandwidth of DVD-A i.e. bandwidth out to appr 100 KHz rather than the standard 20 KHz of most lower priced receivers and amps. Comes in black or silver.

DVD: Panasonic DVD-S25 $80
This is a surprisingly good sounding CD player / solid performing DVD player, especially for the money involved. Black or silver low profile cosmetics.

Digital coaxial cable: Belden 1506A or 29248 $20
This is a very simple but good performing digital cable.

Speakers: BIC Venturi DV62Si $149 pr or BIC Venturi DV52Si $129 pr*
These speakers may not be recognized as being "audiophile quality", but they sound quite good for the money invested. The 62's will play a little louder, offer better bass response and have a little smoother sounding upper midrange. If you can swing it, the extra $20 per pair and little bit bigger cabinet are well worth it.

Sub: BIC Venturi D1015 $185
Not "king of the castle" by any means, but a decent value none the less.

Power Line Conditioner: Monster Cable HTS-2000 $125
This looks like an overgrown power strip on steroids. If you don't like the looks of this, take a look at the Panamax 1000 or 1000+. This is a rack mount sized device with filtering, surge protection and staggered turn on. Much more sophisticated than the Monster and available for about $100 used on Agon.

Speaker cabling: 500 ft of Carol E1044S ( Parts Express #100-730 ) $92
Good bang for the buck. Uses four 16 gauge conductors arranged in a spiral wrapped star quad.

The total for all of this would be right around $1250 if you went with the most expensive items suggested, shipping additional.

If you wanted to get "tweaky" and improve the speakers without spending much money, i would suggest the following modifications.

2 square yards of black felt & 2 rolls of "temporary hem tape" ( less than $15 from a local "craft" or "fabric shop" )

4 twenty oz bags of polyester fiberfil ( less than $2 per bag from Wal-Mart )

I would use the felt to cover the front baffle boards on the 6 speakers ( not the sub ). This means pulling the drivers out and cutting the felt to fit. Adhese a layer of tape just around the outside of each driver on the baffle and the outer edge of the speaker baffles. This will hold the felt in place without making any type of permanent marks. What this does is minimize reflections from the baffle, smooth out the sound and produce better imaging. For speakers that don't have "flush mounted" ( counter-sunk) mids and tweeters, this is a very simple to do tweak that works quite well.

While the speakers are pulled apart, install appr half a bag of the Polyester fiberfil into each of the cabinets. This will use up three bags for six speakers. The entire contents of the fourth bag should be placed inside the subwoofer. This will tighten up the sound, increase intelligibility, reduce out of band leakage from the ports and improve bass definition.

If you're really feeling "brave" and up to a challenge, you could rewire the speakers internally with the cable purchased to wire up the speakers. With a 500 foot spool, you'll have plenty left over to do whatever you want with. Having said that, this is the most economical way to purchase this cable, as it's still cheaper than buying a exactly what you need ( shorter length ) in the equivalent Monster type product.

Hope this helps... Sean
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* Six identical speakers ( three pairs ) will work best if you intend to listen to multi-channel music. This will give you a left front, center front, right front, left rear, center rear and right rear along with an amplified subwoofer. Don't worry about using a "non-center" channel for the center channels as they will probably work better in most installations than the more common horizontal design. If possible, keep all of the speakers at about the same height with the same vertical orientation.

I didn't even think of the NAD "combo" unit. That would be both convenient and of good quality, but it doesn't do surround sound at all. My guess is that this was a big part of the equation since Eric stated "Almost 100% for movies/tv but want to move to music as well". With that in mind, i think that the NAD would be a great piece for a bedroom or any other secondary type of system. Sean
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Sheesh. I overlooked that Eric already had a DVD/CD player. Maybe i need to read things a little better myself : )

Having said that, you can pocket the $80 that i recommended for the Panasonic DVD player or put that towards some new recordings to play on your new system. Either way, these are only my comments and they are worth exactly ( or slightly less than ) what you paid for them : ) Sean
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Can we look at this logically without people getting upset with me for doing so?

Do you folks recommending the Def Tech ProCinema 60 realize how big this room is? Not only is it 16 x 20, it also has an 18+ foot ceiling. There's quite a few cubic feet there.

Do you realize that you're recommending the use of five 3.5" "woofers" with one 8" "sub-woofer" to try and pressurize this much space? It just ain't gonna do it. At least not very well or very low in frequency.

Do you realize that these speakers are nominally rated at 88 dB's and "somewhere" between 4 to 8 ohm loads according to the manufacturer? For most receivers, lower impedances are NOT an "easy load". Top it off with lower sensitivity and you'll have to drive the receiver even harder.

I'm not knocking this system as it might sound quite nice for what it is, i just don't think that it is a suitable candidate for this size room / specific type of installation.

For sake of comparison and so that you know where i'm coming from, the BIC Venturi system that i recommended has six 6" woofers with bigger cabinets for more extended bass, a more powerful 10" sub in a larger cabinet for more powerful bass, the system is rated at 90 dB's, which is measurably more sensitive and has an 8 ohm nominal impedance, making it an easier load.

Even though these speakers retail for over $1300, they can be bought for less money via the net than what the Def Tech's would be available for. If you're wondering why you can get SO much more speaker for less money ( larger 6.1 system vs smaller 5.1 system ), open up an audio or HT magazine and take a look. Somebody has to pay for those expensive two page ads that Def Tech runs.

If you bought the BIC system as it is, it would run circles around the Def Tech system in a situation like this. If you did the aforementioned mods that i recommended to it for about $25, i think that you would be amazed at how good it sounded. For the money, these speakers in this quantity are going to be hard to beat. While i don't have much faith in reviewers, read the reviews on their website. Sean
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Slappy: Due to the laws of physics, the harder that you drive a speaker, the higher its' cut-off frequency becomes. Given that you're working with a 3.5" woofer in the "mains", how low do you think it will go with one watt fed into it? Now how low will it go with several watts fed into it? Same thing goes for a single 8" driver.

Maybe they do sound "good". Maybe they will play "loud enough". Maybe they will offer "deep" bass extension. The laws of physics dictate that there has to be a compromise somewhere and it comes into play when you want that type of system to do all of the above at the same time. Given that most movies introduce deep bass at the point of peak output, obtaining extension with spl and retaining a cohesive presentation over the rest of the band starts looking harder and harder. That is, unless someone has found a way to break the laws of physics.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm NOT trying to start a pissing match or attack the product(s) that you or anyone else recommended. What i am trying to do is to help folks better understand "the big picture" involved with building a system. The lack of taking room acoustics and size into consideration is a major problem with most installations that i see. That is, some people have good sized tower speakers spread 7' apart and they have a foot on each side of them. Or they have those same speakers tucked up against their "big screen". The next system is in a room that is 20' wide and they are running speakers that fit into the palm of your hand. Obviously, all of those situations are FAR from optimum. These are people that will never know how much better their systems could sound or what they are missing if nobody takes the time to explain the how's, what's and where's to them.

You have to pick speakers that will work with your specific room and listening arrangement. If you don't, anything else that you do will be based on trying to band-aid the speaker / room interphase.

If you want "impact", you have to have surface area and / or sensitivity. If you want to keep things cohesive without sounding "strained" or actually straining the driver or amp to get that impact, you have to have high sensitivity. After all, lower sensitivity not only works the amp harder, it pushes the speaker harder. As previously mentioned, the harder we push the speaker, the higher the cut-off frequency, so extension is lost. All of this is not to mention that the more excursion that the driver has to take from being pushed harder to obtain the output while rolling off even higher, the more distortion it creates and the less cohesive the presentation is. It is a VERY vicious circle.

Having said that, there are PLENTY of systems out there that work "good enough". If we ever want to get beyond people shopping at Best Buy and Circuit City, we have to offer REAL solutions at affordable prices that are BETTER than "good enough". Until we can do that, the average consumer will never know that "good enough" really isn't "good" at all. Sean
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