Mixing Speakers for Home Cinema and music

[admin_exported]

I'm thinking of finally buying an AV amp, as my Rotel has seemingly given up the ghost, and I'm looking at the Denon AVR 1610 or 1910 (can't see much difference between them in the specs and budget is tight, as the Rotel failure was a bit unexpected!

If I go down this route, I may use my Monitor Audios as fronts and stereo, and buy centre, rears and sub separately. The purist would say I should buy MA surround speakers, but those tend to be pricey, so I am thinking of going down the route of perhaps Q Acoustics models, also I like the idea of being able to wall mount the rears. My question is, how do people think those will match up, and will I get a big imbalance using different makes of speakers?

Also, looks like the Denons don't have a phono stage, and I still have quite a lot of vinyl - any ideas on phono amps, or an alternative AV amp with a phono input?

Current system: Project 1 Xpression T/T; Rotel RA-02 amp (dead); Cheap (Richer Sounds special about 8 years ago) Philips CD Player; Autoport Express to stream music from laptop; Sky HD Box; PS3; Monitor Audio Silver S6 spkrs

 

[The_Lhc]

krisgib:If I go down this route, I may use my Monitor Audios as fronts and stereo, and buy centre, rears and sub separately. The purist would say I should buy MA surround speakers, but those tend to be pricey, so I am thinking of going down the route of perhaps Q Acoustics models, also I like the idea of being able to wall mount the rears. My question is, how do people think those will match up, and will I get a big imbalance using different makes of speakers?

The general advice would be you should at the very least get the matching centre for the MAs, you can go cheap on the surrounds to less detriment, but you'll really notice a weak centre speaker. My surrounds don't match my fronts and I can't say I really notice.

Also, looks like the Denons don't have a phono stage, and I still have quite a lot of vinyl - any ideas on phono amps, or an alternative AV amp with a phono input?

The obvious one would be a Project phono stage, they start from about 70 quid I think, I've got the USB equipped one which I use purely for ripping vinyl to my PC, works fine.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for those thoughts lhc