'Home Theater' upgrade suggestion...

[Inspector Jihad]

I got the Onkyo HT-S780. Its sounds really good for my needs but if I wanted to upgrade from that what do you think I should do?

 

[3chordcharlie]

Well, generally the first thing you would want to upgrade is speakers. Based on the price of the system, you currently have a 7.1 speaker setup worth about $200, so there's plenty of room for improvement

 

[mshan]

If you're already happy with your home theater surround sound, why not consider a projector and get a truly large screen image instead of spending more money on marginal sound upgrades?:

http://www.projectorcentral.com

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

A projector would certainly be a fun idea if you don't have one already and want to get a theatrical experience going.

For the sound portion, your receiver is really the strong point in that system since it's a $200-$300 receiver new which is a good one to keep.

Speakers or sub is going to make the biggest difference.

If you listen to a lot of music, the front stereo pair is going to be where to concentrate. If you aren't already, try listening to music in Stereo rather than a surround mode. With just two speakers and the sub going you're getting playback as was intended.

If you watch mostly movies, the front three speakers (especially the center channel) are the most important. Matching the front three is a good idea, so if you do a decent amount of movie watching buy want to do an upgrade for music (stereo pair), it would be a good idea to upgrade the center to match at the same time.

The surrounds aren't a big deal. You can even move the fronts to be surrounds if you replace the fronts.
Unless you listen to DVD-A or some other kind of multichannel music, the surrounds aren't going to be used much and it's not a huge deal if they don't match.
If it's a choice between upgrading all 7 speakers to a medium upgrade or upgrading the front three to a good upgrade, do the front three.


Ok, there's also the sub.
How big is your room? How satisfied are you with the amount of bass the Onkyo sub puts out? Any considerations like living in an apartment etc?


So, lastly the question that probably should have come first: What's your budget?

 

[adammthompson]

Get some Paradigm speakers:

2 Paradigm Titan (or 2 Paradigm Atom)
1 Paradigm CC-170
4 Paradigm ADP-170
1 Paragigm PDR-10 (or 1 PDR-8 or 1 PDR-12)

OR

2 Paradigm Cinema 70
1 Paradigm Cinema CC
4 Paradigm Cinema ADP
1 Paragigm PDR-10 (or 1 PDR-8 or 1 PDR-12)

For the money, you can't beat the sound of Paradigm's inexpensive speakers.

 

[mshan]

Unless you need thunderously loud sound levels or room shaking bass, dvd soundtracks just aren't that difficult to reproduce satisfactorily (I think that's why a lot of cheap home theater in a box systems can actually sound pretty good).

However, producing 2 channel audio for music is much, much more difficult. If you feel your current system is deficient in that area, perhaps an used integrated amp and nicely matched set of speakers just for music reproduction would be worth it. A stop gap measure here could be to hook up a pair of used Vandersteen 2ce speakers (http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1142748367) to the B speaker outputs of your Onkyo. The Vandersteen 2 are very easy to drive and are forgiving of lower quality amplification (though they do benefit from being fed a higher quality signal).

If your Onkyo is more than satisfactory for music and movies, I would again recommend a projector (Infocus SP4805 is awesome, even projecting onto a white wall): watching a dvd on an 8 ft. diagonal wall / screen (Infocus SP4805 set up to project an 8 ft. diagonal image could be described like watching a dvd on a very high quality 96 inch diagonal plasma tv!) will do so much more for your home theater enjoyment than a similar or even greater investment in marginally better for home theater audio equipment and speakers.

Just my two cents.

 

[Muadib]

I can't make a sugestion without knowing how much you want to spend. Theads like this are useless without knowing an amount, but theres at least one a day.

 

[SearchMaster]

Originally posted by: mshan
Unless you need thunderously loud sound levels or room shaking bass, dvd soundtracks just aren't that difficult to reproduce satisfactorily (I think that's why a lot of cheap home theater in a box systems can actually sound pretty good).

I agree with this. I was looking for a cheap HTIB system and got one of those Onkyos. It sounded pretty good for movies, but when playing music, it was really lacking. My wife likes to listen to music on it, so we ended up getting an H/K AVR520 and some Polk speakers. The difference in quality is striking; and since we got a remarkable deal on the receiver, the difference in cost really wasn't that much.