Sick of all these speakers in here – eight all in, and miles of associated cabling (unidirectional of course).

What would people recommend that can do music and movies equally? Movie systems seem to be huge on bass but not on musicality, all the better to make your ears bleed/annoy your neighbours with punch explosions and the like presumably. My semi-cheap 5.1 system sounds really quite nice for films (and strangely the music in films) but really crappy when you play a CD through it. It’s a Marantz something with Tannoy 5.1 speakers that were £200 on offer from Richer Sounds a while back.

I thought I wanted the Arcam Solo Movie 5.1, thinking I could jsut about stretch to two grand maybe at some point in the future, but then I realised that the speakers are two grand and the electronics are another two grand.

Small size and discretion are preferred, both for speakers and electronics.

On the face of it your system should sound ok, there’s nothing wrong with the components as such. I have a big Yamaha AV amp, with 5.1 Sony Chorus speakers, and a Cambridge DVD99 player. The thing is you adjust the sub so that it’s balanced with the rest of the system, and switch off any sound processing when playing music, so that you just play music in stereo. I’m pretty picky about how my music sounds, and mine sounds fine to me. You could go for a new Yamaha or Onkyo amp, they get fantastic reviews, and the KEF ‘Egg’ 5.1 speakers, not sure of their name. A mate has them, and they sound fantastic.

Most AV amps and receivers aren’t able to handle hi-fi speakers- at least for critical listening. When I used a Spendor speaker system for surround using a decent Denon AV receiver the sound was great for movies but was so dissapointing for CD that I used a separate Linn amp to drive the front pair when listening to CD. Then I switched to a Miller and Kreisel system. M&K speakers are really easy to drive and give audiophile quality sound even with an AV amp- better than the Spendors and Linn combination. Trouble is they’re not cheap.

Got a cheepish Onkyo wired up to my telly, it replaced my Bose 2.1 setup which I broke while decorating. Very happy overall

I swear by B&W speakers. I have a Denon AVR 1909 home cinema receiver with 5 B&W speakers and a MJ Acoustics sub. I listen to most of my music with an ipod in a Denon ipod dock plugged into the amp and just the front speakers, B&W 685s, selected and it sounds great to me. As a home cinema rig it’s no slouch either.

Forget about AV Home Audio surround sound blahdeblah. Music comes first. Get a decent music hifi and your film playback will sound perfectly good.

NAIM. As ever…

For years I messed about with this kind of stuff. Then kids came along and stopped me spending large amounts of money on this kind of stuff.

I ended up with a Yamaha amp and Tannoy floor standing speakers. Just in a stereo set-up It still sounds exc excellent!

But…

A mate has Tannoy speakers. Two up front in each corner at the front and another two at the rear. Then he got a central one. Sounded great – but then he added a sub.!!!!!!!

Man! it is great! He runs it through an Arcam Alpha 8 amp and it ended up costing around £1k but it is awesome!

I’m sure more modern stuff will be even better but may well cost a lot more.

For £1k I feel it was money well spent.

Naim DVD 5. I’m with Woppit on this.

You could go for a new Yamaha or Onkyo amp, they get fantastic reviews, and the KEF ‘Egg’ 5.1 speakers, not sure of their name. A mate has them, and they sound fantastic.

I have a Yamaha AX763 AV amp with Kef 2005.3 eggs (with original and better Kube 1 sub) and whilst stunning with DTS HD & Dolby HD films, it’s far from great with music – this is a £1k+ system. I built the system as an AV system, so have no issues with it and whilst music is acceptable, it’s probably not a patch on the old Technics system I had 10 years ago

I’d suggest going to a specialist rather than Richer Sounds where they have a listening room. We did this with our current setup. I wanted something to go with my Kef Coda 10’s I already had. After trying 4 different AV’s with their speakers we settled on the Denon 1909 and tried it with the Kef eggs and it just didn’t work no matter how adjusted the setup. In the end after trying a few others and nearly a full day we went for some Q Acoustics speakers which I tried to avoid as I had never heard of them before. Once setup they complemented the sound produced by the Coda 10’s I had to buy them. They’re probably much better speakers out there but for the budget I’d set myself they were a bargain.

personally, i like top quality speakers for hifi, matched to a set for surround effects and a 5.1 amplifier. There is less variability in amplification than speakers – valves aside!

so my set up is a 5.1 sonus faber speakers and rel subwoofer with a cheapish Onkyo receiver. it’s not the best for music but is a good compromise. For better sound i have a Quad 303 as power amp on the stereo, but it needs a service 🙁

So spend the most you can afford on speakers, B&W are another good brand, then look for a receiver would be my advice.

+1 Q Acoustic, I have the 2000 series Cinema pack with an Onkyo AV amp, very good sound for the money, also you could run a separate stereo speaker pair off the zone 2 output and even listen to a different source whilst doing so.(Although this restricts you to 5.1)
My system with the above set up HERE