Home threatre suggestions?

[sbin]

Hi,

I'm currently building my home threatre, I got a sony hdtv that only display 1080i, and i'm a complete noob here. so i been looking around for home threatres. what's the best bang for buck systems are that around 500-800 budget? of course, the cheaper the better, but at the same time I dont want a sucky system.

THANKS ALOT FOR ANY SUGGESTIONS!!!

[Aske001]

The HTIB (Home Theatre In a Box) all-in-one units generally don't have very good sound. After all, you're buying a receiver and 6 speakers for that price - how good can it be when you'd pay that much just for decent pair of bookshelf speakers for music? If all you want is convenience, $500-$800 should buy you one about as good as they get. You may be disappointed though if you're used to better sound from your home stereo system.

An alternative is to scrounge the sales of home theatre equipment looking for bargains. There's a lot of top-quality gear out there right now being sold for less than half price as one-of-a-kind, open box, end-of-the-line, last year's model etc. at store like Future Shop, A&B Sound etc. You could put together a system for $800 that would blow away any HTIB you could buy for that money. In the last few weeks I've seen decent Denon and Yamaha AV receivers for $250, Velodyne and Polk subwoofers for $150, a set of Athena surrounds for $300 etc.

[hoob]

I had a HTIB and it was OK, but not spectacular. This was surprising because it was a pretty "high-end" Sony model around $900. After 2 years I got rid of it and got a dedicated receiver, DVD player, and compact speaker system and I like the sound much better. The speakers are also a lot more suited to my small condo living room.

1) http://www.onkyousa.com/model.cfm?m=TX-SR574&p=i&class=Receiver
2) http://www.onkyousa.com/model.cfm?m=DV-SP502&p=i&class=DVD
3) http://www.gspr.com/canton/cd1.html

EDIT: oops, didn't notice the budget figures... This setup was more like $1300. My point was that even over $800, I wasn't blown away by the HTIB system I got. So don't expect the world!

[sbin]

thanks!!
I'm looking at a bose system right now, i heard they are legends...

[Badman]

thanks!!
I'm looking at a bose system right now, i heard they are legends...

prepare to be bashed.:)

[JAC]

thanks!!
I'm looking at a bose system right now, i heard they are legends...

Legendary advertising, for sure.

Why Bose sucks. (http://www.firstadopter.com/fa/archives/001749.html)

[sbin]

oops... haha, didnt know that, the thing is I went to futureshop today, and the only speakers were on display were BOSE, and i thought they sounded great.... maybe coz im a newbie? but the price tag poped my eyes, almost 3 grand, that's a bit intense.

[Aske001]

Bose makes some fine speakers, and they aren't afraid to innovate. Unfortunately design innovation costs money, and it often means some compromises. The Bose home theatre systems with the tiny satellites and the big Acoustimass subwoofer offer nice aesthetics for a living room, and they sound impressive in the store, but they run into the limits of physics. The lower the frequency of the sound, the more air the speaker has to move to achieve the same power. That's why woofers are big and tweeters are small. Tiny satellites just can't move enough air to achieve any real power in the lower midrange, so the system has to cross over to the subwoofer at a fairly high frequency, something like 250 Hz. You can get away with using a single shared subwoofer at frequencies below about 120 Hz, but at frequencies higher than that you are going to notice that the bass isn't coming from the satellites. Bose thinks that's an acceptable compromise, but some people don't agree.