Originally posted by: joshsquall
I don't really have a budget - I'd just like to get a good value for my money. Similar to computer parts, there's always a point of diminishing returns. I know I can buy $20,000 front speakers, but they don't sound 100 times better than $200 fronts. I'd like a good balance between price and performance. The room is around 15x15. I do also need a receiver.
Well, the thing is "sound better" is subjective, and you cant put objective ratings (100x) onto them. Of course, the 20k$ speakers do not *measure* 100x better than the 200$ speakers
Do you have setup constraints? For instance, is it possible for you to get 3 matching bookshelf speakers or floorstanding speakers to be exactly the same height on your front stage (usually only possible if you have a front projector)
Otherwise, since you said you have 50" plasma, you will have to compromise most likely. For center channel speaker of the horizontal type, you want to look for a design that is WMTW (woofers flanking the midrange with tweeter on top center) where the woofers are not separated by more than 1/2 the wavelength of the crossover frequency (to prevent disastrous off-axis lobbing effects). With that said, you would want FL and FR to be matching floorstanding speakers with most likely, a WWMT driver alignment. Finally, the center channel would have to be as high as possible so that the tweeter can get as close as possible to be in line with the FL and FR tweeters.
If this arrangement is beyond your budget, or you have good bass management in your receiver and want to just use bookshelf sized speakers, you would want to get 3 matching bookshelf speakers (most likely 2-way) and set them up in the same vertical-oriented fashion. You dont want to lay them on their side, and you want to avoid the common MTM center channel speaker design because they commonly have very bad off-axis lobbing.
Speaker stands are somewhat dependant on what you feel acceptable to have in your home. I typically would want some stands that the speakers can mount to (assuming the speakers have mounting thru-bolts). Its nice to have speaker stands where you can fill the pillars with lead shot or sand so that you can weigh it down (harder to knock over).
For subwoofer, this really depends on your room. Is it 15x15 enclosed fully? or is it open to other areas? This matters because the subwoofer needs to pressurize all of the enclosed air. If enclosed, something like HSU VTF-2, SVS PB-10 should be enough. If open to the rest of your house, then you probably wanna look at something a size bigger. Of course, there are many other companies that make wonderful subwoofers out there!
If you cannot demo, its going to be kinda shooting a shotgun in the dark (for us in terms of advice, and for you in terms getting the "right" speaker). Since sound quality is very subjective, its very difficult for us to offer choices that may suit your liking. My advice above is typical "good" overall design, but there are many other details that are important.
Do you live near Bestbuy w/ Magnolia? Perhaps, if so, you can audition Def Tech, Vienna Acoustics, Klipsch, JBL. These speakers all have their own flavor, and you will most likely not like some of them (which can help in narrowing down the speaker choices). Most online venders like Swan, AV123, Axiom, Ascend, AudioConcepts, have nice speaker offerings and have 30 day trial periods. They sound very different however from each other, so it is important to know what you like or dislike.
Otherwise, check Paradigm, B&W, Dali, Monitor Audio, NHT, etc. websites to see if they have a dealer near you so that you can check these retail brands out.
I happen to like B&W more than Paradigm and Dali, but there would have been absolutely no way I would have been able to know based on numbers and graphs. In order to know for sure, you have to listen to the source material that you normally listen to on these speakers.
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