Combining 5.1 theatre and stereo audio

[dusty545]

I'll be building a new house next year and installing a dedicated home theatre/listening room. The dimensions of this will be about 3.4m wide x 4.3m deep.

Most of the things I'm considering I've already got ideas for:

Visual - Panasonic PT-AE3000 projector, ~90" screen, BluRay (Sony BDPS-760 is looking tempting), Denon AVR-2310 receiver.

Audio - Very tempted by the Naim Uniti as it'll provide all the things I'm looking for (but not easy to find here in Australia) but also considering pairing a Cyrus CD 6SE/6XP.

The one consideration I now have to face is what speaker set up to go with. For this I have a couple of thoughts:

1. Use a single 5.1 setup for both and route the output from the receiver and stereo amp through bi-wiring terminals. Something like B&W 685 theatre or Monitor Audio BR5 AV perhaps?

2. Use a style system like KEF's KHT 3005SE for 5.1 and put stereo through a dedicated speakers.

3. Use in-wall speakers (the cabling will be put in the walls during the build) and, again, have separate dedicated speakers for stereo.

Ideally, I'd like to have just the one speaker set-up. My consideration is that using both sets of terminals on a bi-wirable speaker may lead to too great a loss of quality, using two sets of speakers may be unwieldy for the space available and I'm not yet sold on any in-wall speakers I've heard for home cinema.

One last note: I'm now living in Melbourne, Australia and not all products are available here and many have huge mark-ups compared to UK pricing. Overall, I'm budgeting on around $15,000 Aus (UK 8k).

Any recommendations or suggestions for speaker options would be greatly appreciated. I'm not starting the build until after new year but I want to consider my options and do some research for pricing.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Don't do 1) - you may well damage the speakers and both systems.

I'd run a multichannel amplifier with preouts, and run the front left/right preouts into a line input on the stereo amplifier. The NaimUniti, for example, has a fixed-gain option for just this purpose.

The connect your stereo source components to the stereo amp, your AV ones to the multichannel one, your front L/R speakers just to the stereo amp and all the other speakers to the multichannel one.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Andrew,

Noobie question here. Ive always wondered, will this result in a significantly different tone coming from the fronts when listening to 5.1 as opposed to if all 5 speakers were connected through the surround amp?

I presume when using pre-outs from the AV reciever to a stereo amp. the sound delivered from the stereo amp will sound quite different to the sound delivered if the AV amp was connected directly to the speakers. For stereo this is fine, but when watching a movie however, wont the stereo amp powered fronts provide a different sound image to the centre and rears?

 

[Andrew Everard]

No, because the automatic set-up in the receiver can also apply equalisation to balance out the tonality of all the speakers.

 

[dusty545]

I was worried that might be the case with using bi-wierable terminals.

I can't see any pre-outs (except for a zone 2 stereo pair) on the back of the AVR-2310. Would I be able to use these or would I be better off looking elsewhere, receiver-wise?

I'm guessing that I'd need to have the stereo amp on whenever I wanted to run 5.1 with your suggested set-up. Would I be better off with discrete speaker set-ups for 5.1 and stereo (as per my second consideration)? I'm maybe a little paranoid but about premature wear on the stereo components but considering that this will be my first major outlay on home theatre/audio in many a moon...

Can you make any recommendations for combinations that I can audition further at my local retailers (there's a very well respected one - run by an ex-pat - about 4 miles away)? I do like the sound from previous Cyrus incarnations and I'm fond of Naim too. Can you suggest a strong 5.1 speaker set that also works well in stereo (B&W are previous faves) but I'm open to [preferably British] recommendations.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Between the main audio/video ins and the speaker terminals are two banks of eight sockets, one marked 'Ext. In' and the other 'PRE OUT'.

To connect to an external amp you use the FL and FR sockets in the 'PRE OUT' set.

Yes, you would have the stereo amp on when listening to surround, but this shouldn't present any problems at all in terms of wear and tear.

For obvious reasons given our Awards I'd suggest the NaimUniti is well worth considering, and I'd probably go for one of the B&W 6xx Theatre systems. I really like the 685 Theatre, but you may prefer the larger 684 set-up...

 

[dusty545]

Sorry... should perhaps look a little closer at the back panel connections. Thought that seemed a little odd to have no pre-outs.

I'm thinking the Uniti as the streaming is great (especially as I've got a considerable library of Apple Lossless encoded files for when I feel lazy) and I'm putting in plenty of gigabit data points throughout the house.

I've always loved B&W ever since my old DM 601s. Think I may have to do some hunting price-wise in the mean time as they're a touch pricey here (roughly 1900 quid!) and it may actually be cheaper to purchase UK side and get my father to ship over here for me.

Thanks for the help!