2.1 Setup - $1k or close to it - Update

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo

Originally posted by: Excelsior
Easy, IMO.

Receiver: HK 3480.

Note, you can also find this receiver for much less on ebay, where HK has their own store.

Sub: Dayton 12" subwoofer.

That leaves you roughly 580 for the two mains..more than enough .

When it comes to the mains would you rather have bookshelf or floorstanding speakers?

The m3ti or m22ti would be nice.

These if you'd like to spend a bit less.

Or some Paradigm Titans, or these,, or these.

I would prefer floorstanding and I think for the area that would be best, I might want to keep these speakers on the sides of my desk, it's an L shaped desk

Sorry if others asked questions or something, I'll get to them, kind of busy at the same time, planning some things

Then I recommend these.

Ebay has them at a pretty nice price!

I'll probably have to stop by some local places and listen to the speakers mentioned in this thread

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo

Originally posted by: Excelsior
Easy, IMO.

Receiver: HK 3480.

Note, you can also find this receiver for much less on ebay, where HK has their own store.

Sub: Dayton 12" subwoofer.

That leaves you roughly 580 for the two mains..more than enough .

When it comes to the mains would you rather have bookshelf or floorstanding speakers?

The m3ti or m22ti would be nice.

These if you'd like to spend a bit less.

Or some Paradigm Titans, or these,, or these.

I would prefer floorstanding and I think for the area that would be best, I might want to keep these speakers on the sides of my desk, it's an L shaped desk

Sorry if others asked questions or something, I'll get to them, kind of busy at the same time, planning some things

Then I recommend these.

Ebay has them at a pretty nice price!

I'll probably have to stop by some local places and listen to the speakers mentioned in this thread

Indeed, that is a good price, and, with those you would actually do just fine with no sub (IMO).

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo

Originally posted by: Excelsior
Easy, IMO.

Receiver: HK 3480.

Note, you can also find this receiver for much less on ebay, where HK has their own store.

Sub: Dayton 12" subwoofer.

That leaves you roughly 580 for the two mains..more than enough .

When it comes to the mains would you rather have bookshelf or floorstanding speakers?

The m3ti or m22ti would be nice.

These if you'd like to spend a bit less.

Or some Paradigm Titans, or these,, or these.

I would prefer floorstanding and I think for the area that would be best, I might want to keep these speakers on the sides of my desk, it's an L shaped desk

Sorry if others asked questions or something, I'll get to them, kind of busy at the same time, planning some things

Then I recommend these.

Ebay has them at a pretty nice price!

I'll probably have to stop by some local places and listen to the speakers mentioned in this thread

A lot of these internet direct brands wont have any in local places for you to hear.

AV123 for example is internet direct and you'd have to find a user in your area to demo theirs. Check out audioenvy to see if there's someone in your area that has rockets. You could also start a thread over at the AV123 forum to see if there's anybody near you.

Oh, and all these brands I've mentioned will have a nice return policy due to the fact that it's hard to get a demo. At most, you'll have to pay shipping costs.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo

Originally posted by: Excelsior
Easy, IMO.

Receiver: HK 3480.

Note, you can also find this receiver for much less on ebay, where HK has their own store.

Sub: Dayton 12" subwoofer.

That leaves you roughly 580 for the two mains..more than enough .

When it comes to the mains would you rather have bookshelf or floorstanding speakers?

The m3ti or m22ti would be nice.

These if you'd like to spend a bit less.

Or some Paradigm Titans, or these,, or these.

I would prefer floorstanding and I think for the area that would be best, I might want to keep these speakers on the sides of my desk, it's an L shaped desk

Sorry if others asked questions or something, I'll get to them, kind of busy at the same time, planning some things

Then I recommend these.

Ebay has them at a pretty nice price!

I'll probably have to stop by some local places and listen to the speakers mentioned in this thread

A lot of these internet direct brands wont have any in local places for you to hear.

AV123 for example is internet direct and you'd have to find a user in your area to demo theirs. Check out audioenvy to see if there's someone in your area that has rockets. You could also start a thread over at the AV123 forum to see if there's anybody near you.

Oh, and all these brands I've mentioned will have a nice return policy due to the fact that it's hard to get a demo. At most, you'll have to pay shipping costs.

Yeah, sadly that is the case. Itd be so nice if there was a store in every decent sized town that had a sh!tload of speakers available to demo.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Excelsior
Yeah, sadly that is the case. Itd be so nice if there was a store in every decent sized town that had a sh!tload of speakers available to demo.

Unfortunately the only way they'd stay in business is if they had a $20 cover charge to get in the door. Most people would come in, listen, then buy off the web since it would be cheaper and possibly tax-free.

 

[RollWave]

I'd go with some Ascends. They definitely rock.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: Excelsior
Yeah, sadly that is the case. Itd be so nice if there was a store in every decent sized town that had a sh!tload of speakers available to demo.

Unfortunately the only way they'd stay in business is if they had a $20 cover charge to get in the door. Most people would come in, listen, then buy off the web since it would be cheaper and possibly tax-free.

Yeah..just dreaming.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: rnp614
I'd go with some Ascends. They definitely rock.

Would they be good on their own for a 2.0 setup? The only thing I read that was negative about them was they were a bit lacking in the low end, but I never cared about that because I intended to use them with my PB10 at all times.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

Originally posted by: rnp614
I'd go with some Ascends. They definitely rock.

Would they be good on their own for a 2.0 setup? The only thing I read that was negative about them was they were a bit lacking in the low end, but I never cared about that because I intended to use them with my PB10 at all times.

Yeah, I would agree. Paired with a sub, sure..but for mains even the Athena F2.2s would work better (two 8" woofers as opposed to two 6.5").

Specs may not be true, but Athena says the F2.2s are rated as low as 35Hz, whereas the Ascends are rated down to 50Hz.

 

[Apex]

For music, you really really want to consider 2.0. Subs (even very expensive ones) are difficult to integrate well for music.

 

[A5]

avsforum.com

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: A5
avsforum.com

lol, more like "audioreview" and "ecoustics".

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Oh, and the ELTs with bass station would be another option for something with good bass without a sub.

(AV123 says the bass station gets down to 33hz)

I think the ELTs are normally $299/pair and the bass stations are $599/pair. You also get a CD player that's normally $399 included all for $547.

 

[Excelsior]

Very interesting.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

I'm thinking of spending right around $1500 on this now and I'll probably go for a 2.0 setup although this will be going in a pretty long room since I'm going to be moving my room into the basement so a sub might be nice for that much space.

How is this deal? http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=40&threadid=1662275&enterthread=y

I'm thinking of picking up that receiver and then finding some local shop that sells the speakers and maybe even buying from them if it doesn't cost too much more than online. With that receiver, I'd like to spend around $1000 on the speakers. I don't have dimensions of the room but I'll try getting those, it's a pretty long room though. I'm not in any hurry and didn't honestly plan to purchase this till the end of the year, but the $500 HK receiver looks like an awesome deal and I may just have to jump on that.

 

[QurazyQuisp]

Build your own... I have a set of 5.1's my dad and I built, they sound amazing... ofcourse this isn't anywhere near the first set of speakers he's built... nearly all the speakers in our house are. The only thing these are lacking is low bass, but we knew that when we were building them and made a subwoofer with the proper amp and spent some time making sure everything was correct. Right now I only have two hooked up, my brother has two more and I have one just sitting here, although once I move in to an apt after my first year of college I'll take the other two back.

If you want to buy some, I'd also recommend these... http://www.av123.com/products_product.php?section=stock&product=16.1

If you have $2,500 to burn, these speakers are absolutely amazing:
http://www.roundsound.com/ref3.html

I recently did a website for a store that sells these and spent some good time listening to them. If I were to spend $2,500 speakers, I'd buy those.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

I've talked about building them with my dad but this would be our first set and I don't want to make mistakes or just not be that good at it on this setup, although building speakers is something I definitely want to do later on down the road.

As for those Onix Reference speakers, they're just too small for this area and I was wanting to get floorstanding speakers.

Heh, I wish I had $2.5k to burn on those speakers

 

[QurazyQuisp]

My dad has a link to a set of floor standing speakers that are supposed to be amazing... it tells you how to make them, which parts and everything... I was going to build those before my dad and I designed these. When he comes home tomorrow I'll see if I can get the link from him.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Why do you say the ref1s are too small? You mean physically not big enough for looks?

I haven't looked into digital receivers a whole lot, but I remeber hearing some negative things about some of them on different forums.

For a stereo set, I think you could do better than the digital HK.

Actually.... another av123 link: ref1s + an SP3 Integrated Amplifier for $999

(I don't know if I linked to that already, but I think that SP3 will be better than any receivers mentioned so far. I think it's normally $999 on its own, on sale for $799 on its own now.

EDIT: SP3 on its own

 

[Apex]

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo
I've talked about building them with my dad but this would be our first set and I don't want to make mistakes or just not be that good at it on this setup, although building speakers is something I definitely want to do later on down the road.

As for those Onix Reference speakers, they're just too small for this area and I was wanting to get floorstanding speakers.

Heh, I wish I had $2.5k to burn on those speakers

http://www.av123.com/products_product.php?section=speakers&product=3.1

Though I prefer the Ref bookshelves, these RS550MK2's are great. They're better than the RS750, IMHO (though I haven't heard the sig's yet). The RS550's seem to have a more flat response to me, whereas the 750's are more rolled off at the top.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I'm really liking my 550s. Maybe the guys at AV123 could put together a package of RS550s and an SP3 for a nice package price like they have going for the ref1s.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Why do you say the ref1s are too small? You mean physically not big enough for looks?

I haven't looked into digital receivers a whole lot, but I remeber hearing some negative things about some of them on different forums.

For a stereo set, I think you could do better than the digital HK.

Actually.... another av123 link: ref1s + an SP3 Integrated Amplifier for $999

(I don't know if I linked to that already, but I think that SP3 will be better than any receivers mentioned so far. I think it's normally $999 on its own, on sale for $799 on its own now.

EDIT: SP3 on its own

Yeah, I meant physically, although I suppose I shouldn't let that be the determining factor.

Another thing is that in the future I may want to add on a front speaker and some rears for a movie or something so I'm not sure that receiver would work

I hate to sound picky so if you have any advice on where you think I may be making a wrong choice, let me know.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Why do you say the ref1s are too small? You mean physically not big enough for looks?

I haven't looked into digital receivers a whole lot, but I remeber hearing some negative things about some of them on different forums.

For a stereo set, I think you could do better than the digital HK.

Actually.... another av123 link: ref1s + an SP3 Integrated Amplifier for $999

(I don't know if I linked to that already, but I think that SP3 will be better than any receivers mentioned so far. I think it's normally $999 on its own, on sale for $799 on its own now.

EDIT: SP3 on its own

Yeah, I meant physically, although I suppose I shouldn't let that be the determining factor.

Another thing is that in the future I may want to add on a front speaker and some rears for a movie or something so I'm not sure that receiver would work

I hate to sound picky so if you have any advice on where you think I may be making a wrong choice, let me know.

Oh yeah, if you might turn this into a 5.1 system someday, then get a receiver.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Now, those reference 1's, how would they compare to the Athena F2.2's?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo
Now, those reference 1's, how would they compare to the Athena F2.2's?

From what I've read it would seem like the Athenas would get a little lower but everything else would favor the ref1s. Haven't heard them though.