New speakers for HT and music.

[mianake]

Hi,
I recently revised our rooms and now have a more dedicated TV listening area with an 80inch TV and listening on couch at 10 ft. away. Chat GPT tells me the walls are lousy for accoustics: wood paneling, mirror and French doors. And one side has higher ceilig than other. This TV area is at one end of large open area like an +, with the tv room at one end, and the other end 35 ft away. We have a table behind the couch with our pc's and will often listen casually here, about 16ft from speakers. Off to the side is another area for sitting where we will also listen, so that is maybe 20 plus ft. But we are not audiophiles. I just bought ELAC Debut 2.0 bookshelves since great price and they sound fine to us, expecially since we had 25 year old smaller speakers. My wife and are sitting about 4 ft apart on the couch, and 7 ft while working, so some good dispersion helpful.

But I feel like splurging, and getting floorstanding speakers in the $3-6k range. Candidates I can listen to nearby include MoFI Sourcepoint 888, Fyne 502S, Dynaudio EVOKE 50 and Ascend Accoustics SIerra and ELX. Any suggestions to add or comments on these. Not sure if 888 too big for 10ft. listening.

I also learned, lol, that stereo amps and AVRs are different creatures. In comments here, I see things like all class d sound close, and sound is not the critical thing for an amp. Are there articles here to educate someone. My assumption is that since we are not audiophiles and doing casual listening that stereo amp is probably more than we need and getting good AVR is better option??? Right now we don't even have sub, may get one depending on how the bass sounds on new floors. ELACs have good phantom center for us, so doubtful re center. Would like 2 surrounds, now using the old Missions speakers there, and might end up with the ELACs there instead (overkill?). So i guess long way of saying 7.1 is probalby fine for amp. (ps is it better to put this part in other part of fourm re amps or avrs. )

thanks for any help, Mianake

 

[Johnkeizer]

For HT I would usually go for a surround amp or receiver, if for no other reason than having the HDMI going into it first opens up many possibilities.

 

[Power Pop 23]

Hi,
I recently revised our rooms and now have a more dedicated TV listening area with an 80inch TV and listening on couch at 10 ft. away. Chat GPT tells me the walls are lousy for accoustics: wood paneling, mirror and French doors. And one side has higher ceilig than other. This TV area is at one end of large open area like an +, with the tv room at one end, and the other end 35 ft away. We have a table behind the couch with our pc's and will often listen casually here, about 16ft from speakers. Off to the side is another area for sitting where we will also listen, so that is maybe 20 plus ft. But we are not audiophiles. I just bought ELAC Debut 2.0 bookshelves since great price and they sound fine to us, expecially since we had 25 year old smaller speakers. My wife and are sitting about 4 ft apart on the couch, and 7 ft while working, so some good dispersion helpful.

But I feel like splurging, and getting floorstanding speakers in the $3-6k range. Candidates I can listen to nearby include MoFI Sourcepoint 888, Fyne 502S, Dynaudio EVOKE 50 and Ascend Accoustics SIerra and ELX. Any suggestions to add or comments on these. Not sure if 888 too big for 10ft. listening.

I also learned, lol, that stereo amps and AVRs are different creatures. In comments here, I see things like all class d sound close, and sound is not the critical thing for an amp. Are there articles here to educate someone. My assumption is that since we are not audiophiles and doing casual listening that stereo amp is probably more than we need and getting good AVR is better option??? Right now we don't even have sub, may get one depending on how the bass sounds on new floors. ELACs have good phantom center for us, so doubtful re center. Would like 2 surrounds, now using the old Missions speakers there, and might end up with the ELACs there instead (overkill?). So i guess long way of saying 7.1 is probalby fine for amp. (ps is it better to put this part in other part of fourm re amps or avrs. )

thanks for any help, Mianake

Given the constraints of your listening space I would look first for an option that can apply room correction - like a WiiM device or an AVR that supports Dirac Live. 'Then' I would consider adding a subwoofer and then consider replacing the ELAC Debut 2.0 loudspeakers and Mission loudspeakers - but with return privileges.

 

[MarkS]

Yes, don't assume that floorstanders will necessarily sound better. At reasonable volumes, bookshelves + a sub are competitive. Over the years, I've gone from massive (>100lbs each) floorstanders to 2-way bookshelves (that measure very well) plus a small sub, plus electronic room correction (no physical room treatments), and I'm getting the best sound I've ever had by a significant margin.

MoFis and Ascends measure well, so go hear those.

And if you want to have surround channels you need an AVR, not a stereo amp. There is no audible difference in sound quality at anything less than earsplitting volumes (where you may run out of power with an AVR vs a very beefy stereo or dual-mono amp, resulting in momentary "clipping" that can sometimes be heard by trained expert listeners, though it's far more likely that even this is overwhelmed by speaker distortion if you don't have giant speakers that can handle huge amounts of power).

 

[Chrispy]

To me good speakers for either purpose are just that. Cheaping out on multich speaker systems is where most complaints come from IMHO.