Floor Standing or Stand Mount Speakers

[admin_exported]

Hi everyone, I'm in the process of putting together a system for both music and cinema, with about a 50% split for each. I'm having a dilemma over the speakers, as I do want a pretty good pair of front stereo speakers and they will be my next purchase and have a budget of around £600 for the speakers alone. I have had some auditions for floor standers, namely Kef IQ5se, Kef IQ7se and B & W 684's and out of the three I preferred the Kef IQ7se.

Are floorstanders going to be the better choice for me, rather than stand mounts (I'm auditioning B & W 685's tomorrow) as I listened to the floorstanders on the suggestion of the hi-fi shop I will be using?

My room is roughly 6m x 6m and I'm using a Den 1907 AV amp.

Any opinions or info. would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Anonymous]

Strictly speaking. If your surround sound setup doesn't have identical speakers you will detriment your surround effect. I know a lot of people point to manufacturer's cinema sets and how they're not homogenious, but unfortunately those sets are to look cool and make more money. (centre channels cost more than bookshelves....)

Anyway, if you want pure surround you need to have identical speakers at all the points, if you're not overly bothered with slightly unbalanced surround and are comfortable equalizing the offsets in your surround processor/amp, then floorstanders are a great solution.

To be honest the best approach is to buy five identical speakers for surround and attach the Kef's to the B posts on your surround amp. Or better yet buy a dedicated stereo amp. I feel you'd be better off in the long run to build the system without compromises, you'll be less prone to the upgrade bug.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your quick response. I note the point you made about identical speakers for surround and have been considering this in trying to make my choices. And also the point you made about building the system with no compromises and therefore minimising upgrades. My previous 'system' was a Bose as the other half thought it looked nice and neat! That was an expensive compromise not to be repeated this time.

I have been considering, longer term, using the AV amp as a pre-amp for the front speakers so that I could then get the most benefit from them for music. But for the moment I'm trying to get the front speakers sorted first, so that I can at least listen to my music in a better way thn I am at the moment.

If I did go the floorstanding route, then I would probably stick with the same speaker make for the surround speakers.