Advice for Home Theater Speakers

[kickalillas2]

I need a pair of bookshelves speakers, and maybe a new center channel, for my home theather. The room is itself is open concept, but the main movie watching space is about 12x12, Which opens up to the kitchen and dining room so not exactly ideal. We mostly watch movies, stream, and play games. About 5% of the time would be listening to music.
Since this is the main living room, my wife would like them not to stand out very much, so looks are a somewhat important.

Budget is around $700

The bookshleves would sit on shelf about 12-15 inches from the wall and would be paired with a sub, HSU VTF 3
Currently looking at the Polk R200, Elac DBR62, and Klipsch RP-600

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
I can throw in some pictures later for additional context.

 

[MacCali]

I need a pair of bookshelves speakers, and maybe a new center channel, for my home theather. The room is itself is open concept, but the main movie watching space is about 12x12, Which opens up to the kitchen and dining room so not exactly ideal. We mostly watch movies, stream, and play games. About 5% of the time would be listening to music.
Since this is the main living room, my wife would like them not to stand out very much, so looks are a somewhat important.

Budget is around $700

The bookshleves would sit on shelf about 12-15 inches from the wall and would be paired with a sub, HSU VTF 3
Currently looking at the Polk R200, Elac DBR62, and Klipsch RP-600

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
I can throw in some pictures later for additional context.

700 is a bit low for three speakers, your experience will surpass a sound bar but will probably not be as pleasant as a better quality two channel. I’m no expert but this is my opinion.

I would try and find a pair of speakers that are around 800 for an open box/demo unit price from an authorized retailer.

My suggestion would be get the elac UB5, it’s better than the debut series. Uni-fi line and also get the uc5 center. Where do you live?

I use the Unifi 2.0 line for HT and they are grand speakers

 

[MacCali]

Also BestBuy is having a clearance sale on a lot of different speaker brands. I see some Martin Logan Motion towers and Center that would be just shy of 800 open box and actual retail would be nearly 2000+

 

[Head_Unit]

maybe a new center channel

- What make/model of all speakers (and receiver) do you have now?
- Yes bigger woofers are better, even with a subwoofer, for midbass
- I haven't heard any of those but as an engineer I respect the designers of all three of those brands. Most likely the ELAC has more bass but more power hungry...with a sub maybe that's not best. The Klipsch likely less power hungry; some people find them "shouty" although that has varied a lot over time and by product within their line.
- https://www.crutchfield.com/ is a good organization which has generally featured easy, inexpensive return policies.
--> My advice is pick whichever one your wife likes the looks of, since your opinion does not matter at all , buy them, try them out. If you both don't like how they sound, change them.

As for the center, unless it's only one person sitting right in the sweet spot, 3-way is better,* like KEF Uni-Q or ELAC Uni-Fi or this one https://www.svsound.com/products/prime-center (We have an SVS SB-2000 Pro we really like; it's a good organization and check this out, 45 days in-home https://www.svsound.com/pages/bill-of-rights plus by the way these https://www.svsound.com/products/prime-bookshelf have had good comments as well.

I'll agree with @MacCali that if it is still on the sale on Martin Logan is quite good. And to riff off of that, speakers last a long long long long time, and the sound quality does pretty much keep improving as you spend more, so it actually makes sense to spend more money. Maybe get a center or satellites and save up for the other pieces.

*Unless you can have a 3rd bookshelf sitting vertically, that's also fine.