Recommendations for £10K+ setup?

[admin_exported]

The time has come to purchase a HT system, with no starting point to speak of in terms of existing equipment, other than a Sky+ HD box and Wii.

I've pretty much settled on the Pioneer LX508, but haven't a clue as to the rest of the setup. The room in entirety is 20' x 20', but the seating/tv area is just over half of that if that makes sense (imagine say a 12'x20' TV room with the TV centered on the 12' side and a 8'x20' office room placed next to it with no dividing wall).

Live in a seemingly well sound insulated apartment block but not looking to make enemies of my neighbours by cranking this thing up super loud very often. After a 5.1 setup primarily for watching TV/movies, quality music performance is desirable but secondary. No multi-room requirement.

Not majorly decided on budget (dangerous I know) - its a case of "will I really notice enough difference if I spent x more at normal listening volumes". If can spend less than £10K and be happy then great - if an extra few thousand would make a significant improvement then I would rather do so now rather than later.

Anyone out there got any suggestions? I live on the East side of London, really struggling to find dealers who have demo facilities who within a few hours could help me nail down some choices. Obviously the main items are:

- some sort of AV amp/processing (combined or separates),

- choice of 5.1 speakers (prefer meaty floorstanders over the "style" kind)

- DVD/CD player (not interested in Blue-Ray/HD-DVD as yet)

- added bonus would be being able to play networked uncompressed CD media to save the changing effort, but not critical at this point.

Suggestions very much appreciated,
Grant.

 

[Anonymous]

You must be nuts spending up to £10K besides which anyone doing so, should already know most of,if not all, the answers to their own questions anyway.

Suggest if you've got £10K to blow away on metal, wires, and glass, then hire out your local Sevenoaks Hi Fi shop for a weekend and let them guide you through this maze instead as my recommendations are bound to save you at least £7K

 

[FoxJA]

It sounds alot, but for a high end system your looking at 3000+ for a screen, 1000+ for an amp, 2000+ for speakers plus HD/Blu Ray player, racks, cables, CD, Radio, remote. I could easily spend 10,000.

 

[Anonymous]

Spot on FoxJA, couldn't have said it better myself.

Up until when I left NZ for the UK eight years ago I had what was a relatively high-end setup at the time back in NZ, but sold most of it before coming over here. I had separate 2-ch/3-ch amps, DD/DTS preprocessor, laser-disc etc etc. Back then I was happily geeky about this stuff but 8 years of enforced deprivation have left me a bit "out of touch" in my knowledge of recent technologies, recommended brands or indeed know any dealers/retailers here in the UK.

Having worked very hard all my life I can afford to spend a little more on something that in the past I took a great deal of pleasure out of and intend to again, so where is the harm in that? Right now I am in a position of starting with a clean slate - which means realistically I'm expecting it's going to cost in that order of money to get completely setup. I bet many people here have spent close to that going through generations of equipment during that time period alone - TV upgrades, amp /speaker upgrades etc. I've waited eight years to get myself setup again, if I choose well I shouldn't need to replace any of the components I buy for at least the next five years so that is only £2K per year of usage. If I use it 20 hours per week, that is £2/hr of use. And that's all assuming I throw it away after five years which realistically would not be the case. The numbers stack up for me...

I figured there must be a number of people on here who either already own or dream of upgrading to a high-end setup and have their "if only I could buy this" wish-lists to help me out. I am relatively "cash-rich but time-poor" - hoping that advice of others could shortcut evaluating every system on the market to a select few options...

Regards,
Grant.