Guys,
Looking into new AV/Speakers for our living room - wondering on your thoughts...
looking at the Yamaha RXV677 (http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/yamaha/rxv677/yama-rxv677-blk) but more wondering which speakers???
Any input is appreciated - Not looking to spend too much over £1k (for both) and with able to get that amp for £400 - leaves £600 or thereabouts for speaker purchases.
My initial thoughts are that the split of the budget may not help you in the long run. Personally I've found speakers generally cheaper to find, so as a minimum I'd be looking at 50/50 split, but more often I've found 60/40 in the amp's favour to be a better balance. The proposed 40/60 split might mean an under-powered amp for the speaker quality.
The Yamaha AV amps are excellent value for money (I've run Yamaha AV amps for the past c.15 years) and whilst not the absolute best in terms of sound quality, they are absolutely superb in terms of the features & functionality you get at the price point. That particular amp will drive a small/medium speaker set, so keep in mind their ratings for your specific room. Consider moving up the range if needed. Yamaha AV amps get a thumbsup from me, very highly recommended and reliable too.
Speakers are often driven by other considerations, for example the amp you have, the size of speaker you require (i.e. what has ' da management' approved), the size of the room they will be in, whether they need to be wall-mounted or free-standing etc. So, more info is needed!
Depending on your specific requirements, you might even need to adjust the ratio of the spend a bit. For example, if you're in a bigger room then you'll ultimately need something that is powerful enough to handle the room, so you might want to spend £800 now on a much more powerful amp and buy a deliberately smaller (and temporary) speaker set until the budget allows you to blow another wad on bigger speakers.
A smaller room might be fine on that amp and only need a c.£400 speaker set, so don't necessarily assume you need to go £1k+ to get what you want, you might find it at a lower budget!
When I first started putting together a home cinema, I bought a good amp and paired it with my existing hi-fi speakers (which gave more than enough bottom end) and a decent centre speaker (which you can get for £100+ these days) to give me a temporary but very good 3.0 sound sytem. I added a separate and good 5.1 speaker package later as budget allowed.
Personally I have a 22' x 11' room, in which I use a KEF speaker set (the predecessor to this one (http://www.kefstore.co.uk/e305-home-theatre-speaker-system-630-p.asp)) because I could not get management approval for the size of box speaker that I wanted for my preferred level of audio quality. She wanted small and unobtrusive, I wanted the best sound - these two objectives rarely align so I ended up going with the best sound quality I could find also met SWMBO's requirements). That system allowed me to mount the speakers on the wall (rears) and on their included stands (front & center) and the sub-woofer did not look horrendous, so it did the job whilst keeping 'da management' happy with the aesthetics. Something like that KEF set is more than big enough to fill my room with good sound and to shake you in your seat when needed. If your room is bigger/smaller then hopefully that will give you a guide as to what that sort of speaker can do.
I'd recommend auditioning the KEF E305 if you have similarly restrictive requirements to mine, but that would ideally need a bigger amp and a budget adjustment.
Finally, you *have* to audition the amp & speakers together if possible. Your ears will make the decision, not the opinions on this forum! Your eyes will tell you how much you need to turn up the amp to get your preferred speakers to sound 'good & loud'. If you're heading towards -25dB all the time on the volume dial then perhaps the amp lacks some grunt etc.
If possible get a home audition, even if you need to drop £100 on them to come to your home with the equipment (many privately owned stores will allow this and will offset whatever they charge against your final purchase). Equipment can sound significantly different in your own room, so it can be a critical deciding factor.
Trust what you hear. It's what you have to live with!
Knew I could trust you to have some input TL, thanks for that. I'm limited by management as well - (always seems to be the case).
Wanted to go to a local richer sounds - but with choices of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Newcastle - none are exactly round the corner.
Might be a road trip on monday perhaps to sound test.
Thanks again ;)
I can not echo the idea of testing the speakers and amp on a tv closest to your, and watching stuff you know as verbertum. I spent 3 hours in a sevenoaks trying out amps and speakers, and you could hear the difference and makes it a better choice. For example in Dark Knight, Joker crashes the fund rasping party the is a gun shot ricochet and the difference between the speakers and the amps set up was so noticeable.
Cheers bud. As said - with where I stay there is very few specialist stores nearby and any that are local are just more or less suppliers and have not got the training to best inform me of what I'm after (if that makes sense)
I also remember when I bought my Home Theatre set up from Richer Sounds they offered me their loaner cable set up box. It's basically a box full of high grade speaker cables, optical RGB whizbang interconnects etc. I thought 'yeah how much difference is expensive speaker cable going to make over my usual cheap bell wire setup?' :blink: You may well already have decent cabling accounted for but I was pretty amazed at the difference quality cables made. No I wouldn't go and buy super awesome diamond encrusted plugs and such like. But I'm also not running bell wire to my speakers either.
Up in Glasgow today and opted for above receiver but with the monitor audio mass speakers.
Thanks to everyone for their input - glad I went and heard speaker options. Delivery next week gives me time to move room around in prep for everything coming. Cheers again
I'm looking at a sonos setup myself
Quote from: Milli;391943Up in Glasgow today and opted for above receiver but with the monitor audio mass speakers.
Thanks to everyone for their input - glad I went and heard speaker options. Delivery next week gives me time to move room around in prep for everything coming. Cheers again
Gratz Milli, glad you found something that you like! :thumbsup:
Quote from: Sneakytiger;392049I'm looking at a sonos setup myself
For the price, you'll get better performance from buying a home cinema setup and then connecting it to Sonos via their Sonos Connect. The actual Sonos speakers are nice, convenient (in terms of wireless), but really don't deliver top quality sound compared to the best AV speakers you can buy at their price point and lack the functionality of a good AV amp. You also need to make sure your TV has an optical out and that you are happy to rely on your TV's native audio decoding capabilities. Once you are happy with that you still need to shell out at least £1,500 to put the system together:
£ 600 Sub
£ 260 Play 3 (rear speaker) - or £170 Play 1
£ 260 Play 3 (rear speaker) - or £170 Play 1
£ 600 Playbar
£ 100 Bridge/Boost as required
£1,820
£1,800 would buy a huge amount of AV equipment imo. I believe that you'd get a better result by spending some of that on dedicated AV stuff, then spending £280 on a Sonos Connect which allows you to plug your 'Sonos music' into the new AV system.
I want sonos but not for my home cinema have that covered. But I want sonos