AV receiver basic help.

[admin_exported]

I Have just purchased a Panasonic 42px80 and im vey happy with it. Now i need to sort out the audio. I am vey fond of listening to music but would also like the surround experience for movies and gaming. Currently have a pair of mordaunt short 906's which i love and would like to continue using. With an av receiver (e.g Onkyo tsr505/605 ) can i run the 906's purely for music and then switch to a seperate surround sound speaker package for movies? If so ,would this be the best way to do it? Or should i incorporate the 906's into the surround sound speaker package.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Also any suggestions for a surround sound speaker for around £300 would be great.

 

[professorhat]

Three options here:

1. Hook the Mordaunt Short's to your new AV amps front speaker terminals and purchase corresponding Mordant Shorts to make up the rest of the speaker package. Then when listening to music, run the AV amp in stereo mode, (or if it features it, a Direct / Pure Direct mode);
2. Get an AV amp with front pre-out sockets allowing you to connect this up to your standard stereo amp. This way, your music still runs through your Mordaunts as it does now, but they can also be used as your front speakers in the 5.1 setup;
3. Buy a completely new AV amp and 5.1 speaker package and run this completely separately from your Mordaunt shorts which are only run for music.

Clearly, the first option is simplest, but compromises slightly on the musical sound. The second option is probably the best of both worlds. The Onkyos you mention can't do this though, you'd need to go with a minimum of the Onkyo 705, or perhaps look at Sony / Denon amps. There are others in this forum who have done this and know much more about it than I do if you need more info!

I don't think you'll achieve it for £300 though, so you might be better just getting an all-in-one 5.1 system for this money (like the LG HT902TB), and keeping your stereo system completely separate.