Klipsch Home Theater Setup

Ha Ha! "Wastland of awful sound" More often than not! I liken the ever expanding number of surround channels (what are we up to now 10, 12?)As "brute force imaging". It’s like when HT came along they threw out the lessons learned by the hi-fi community over the last 50 whatever years and started over. I think the problem was they were trying to duplicate the sound of movie theaters in the home. In theaters you can not have a sweet spot. It has to sound roughly the same (mediocrity spread equally) for every person in every position wall to wall in a large room or lots of folks would not be happy. However in our homes we don’t have that limitation most of the time. We can have a sweet spot and that is where good old stereo shines!
I know some will argue this point but I have found that with a center channel it locks the dialog dead center but with plain old stereo the sound is free to follow the action as it moves from side to side much better. Now of course that is as long as we are sitting at least between the speakers. If someone is sitting outboard of the speakers then a center channel is helpful. In my case it's just the wife and I and we have a love seat centered on the speakers and so are always between them. YMMV.

Sure it is possible to have a truly kick ass surround system but it takes a lot of effort and money to get there. Hell it’s hard enough just to get 2 channel dialed in just right.

Thanks all for the advice. This makes a lot of sense. Digging around a bit I decided to start with a pair of Klipsch RP-600M paired with a  SVS SB12-NSD sub. Total came out to $900, so still under budget. I figure if I ever get the home theater itch I can look to add a center and satellites piecemeal that match the system well.

Great! I hope that works good for you.