Surround speakers. Chicken and egg conundrum.

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My current system consists of: Pioneer PDP-434 HDE, Sky HD, Onkyo TX -SR505 , Samsung DVD-HD870, Kef IQ2c centre, Mission 760 front, MJ acoustics Pro 50 Mark II sub, Mordaunt Short MS25i rear., Alphason rack. The plasma is soon to be replaced by Pioneer PDP-LX508D or 9th Generation Kuro, if I manage to wait that long. I want to upgrade the oldest components i.e. speakers acquired when I was a student. I am willing to spend up to £2K and want traditional speakers. My dilema is do I buy speakers which are considerably better than warranted by my receiver, which is only 4 months old? Do I stick with Kef to compliment the centre speaker, which is also only 4 months old? Or, should I start from scratch and assume the same budget to buy receiver and speakers, in which case receiver, centre speaker and old speakers will be redundant? I want to keep the MJ Acoustics sub so I need to be able to buy speakers separately.

 

[Anonymous]

Seems no-one is interested in chickens or eggs. Help me out please Professor Hat!

 

[professorhat]

Are you now, or will you be in the near future, interested in Blu-Ray? Reason I ask is, spending £2k on speakers to work with the 505 would seem excessive. On the other hand, if you're looking to go Hi-Def, part of that budget could be spent getting a better amp which would decode hi-def sound formats as well as speakers to compliment i.e. starting from scratch as you say.

The other way to look at it is how important music is within all this...

 

[Anonymous]

A Blu-Ray player is definitely on the cards. Music is not so important. I use an iPod Touch through an Onkyo DSAX1 dock.

 

[Anonymous]

why the hell are you using the ms 25s as rears. they should be at the front and the missions as surrounds.

You could try a pair of kef iq5s for fronts £300, kef iq3 for surrounds £200 which should work perfwctly with your kef centre and sell your onkyo on ebay and replace with onkyo 605 (can be had for £300 now) or the new onkyo 606 £400 both of which will decode the new hi def surround. All of wich will leave you loads of your budget left for cables and panasonic blueray player

And playing your ipod through this system or you current system will be far superior to playing using onkyo doc

 

[Anonymous]

Matt 444, because I don't have a clue what I'm doing, hence my questions! I shall swap front and rears as per your advice.

On a more general note, as my my total lack of knowledge is now apparent, in percentage terms, how do you (and the rest of the forum) think budget for an AV system should be allocated?

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Matt444, I've switched front and rears and there is a definite improvement. I'm going to follow yours and Professorhat's suggestions and upgrade the receiver and reduce the budget on speakers.

 

[Anonymous]

I dont think theres an exact science to it really, i would say the system i recomended was fairly balanced price wise.

onkyo 606 £400

Kef iq 5 £300

Kef iq5 £200

Panasonic bd30 blueray £350

This system comes to a total of £1250 and should give you a lot of performance for your money.it should be fairly good for playing music on too with your ipod. It makes sense to get the Kef iq speakers if you have allready got the kef iq centre. the kefs are rated highly in what hi fi.

 

[Anonymous]

or you could spend a grand on your av amp eg onky875 and a grand on some tasty speakers and wait a while before getting blu ray. that would sound better still