System building advice needed
Hey gang,
I could use some help finding the right device(s) to meet our criteria.
I've just ordered Polk R600s that I'll be using as my front stereo pair. These will go at the front of our 16' x 35' great room where we spend most of our time. My primary listening seat on the couch is about 9' away, though I will also listen standing and further back. The Polks are only 87.5dB sensitive, 4 ohm, and need some decent power.
At the back of our great room is our kitchen. My wife has asked for a solution that will allow her to hear tv programs from back in the kitchen, without having to turn up the speakers so high. In this scenario she is nearly 30' from the main speakers. For this I've ordered a pair of Polk R900s which will hang on the wall above our cupboards.
Consequently I need to find the a good solution that will allow me to power both sets of speakers (and send the same "front" signal to both pairs). I also need it to have a subwoofer out, and some form of tone controls or EQ (for the R600s that will be very tight to the front wall). Dirac would be amazing but not required. Bluetooth or streaming capabilities are a nice bonus also. Biggest priority however should be on sound quality for the R600s. My bias is against buying a receiver, but I'm open minded. Connected sources will be mostly digital (toslink or Hdmi) and we mostly stream our music.
Budget is ideally under $2K, and I am open to new or used gear.
Thanks!
OK, you need a whole house audio solution. Get a Martin Logan Forte amp for the kitchen with ARC room correction and another one for the living room. It has a subwoofer out and the ARC room correction is amazing. The TV RCA outs will go to the RCA in on the amp. Download the Play-Fi app to your phone and you are streaming too: https://www.martinlogan.com/en/product/forte
Review: Conclusions: It is almost too good to be true!
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I appreciate all of the great suggestions and advice so far. I am attracted to the Anthem solution as it does appear to offer everything I'm looking for, and I remember lusting after their gear in college, so there's a nice bit of nostalgia there. The Forte amp appears to offer a lot for the price, especially with ARC included, but it's probably not complete enough for my main system. General follow up question - does anyone feel as though I will be giving up too much in terms of pure sound quality by going with an AV receiver as opposed to a more stereo focused 2 channel integrated or separates? Possibly in terms of soundstaging, black background and the like? Thanks again. |
You are going to be a lot happier with a two zone stereo receiver than just about anything else. It's just simpler and you'll have independent volume controls. Otherwise, something like an Anthem AVR with 7.2 channels because the 7 channel models let you dedicate 2 of them to another zone I believe. |
