Home Theater Audio setup question

[tommytick]

HI, Im setting up a home theater in my basement and wanting to use some of my exsisting equiptment. I have 2 Cerwin Vegas (Re30's) and a Cerwin Vega Center Chanel.I currently have a sony STR-D965 (dolby pro-logic).I want to switch to a digital surround 6.1 or 7.1. Do I need to worry about matching my surround speakers to my front and center channel?

[pixelthis]

HI, Im setting up a home theater in my basement and wanting to use some of my exsisting equiptment. I have 2 Cerwin Vegas (Re30's) and a Cerwin Vega Center Chanel.I currently have a sony STR-D965 (dolby pro-logic).I want to switch to a digital surround 6.1 or 7.1. Do I need to worry about matching my surround speakers to my front and center channel?
Its preferable but the front three are the most important.
Move your cervins to the BACK, use your current center for your rear center, and get something like klipsch or b&w, etc for the front three.
AND Sony receivers arent that good (Iknow from experience), stick it in the back of a parked pickup (see GM MICHEAL) and get another, no decent HT exists these days without dolby digital, and dont worry about cost, a decent one can be had these days cheap(sherwood, onkyo, yamaha, etc):1:

[tommytick]

Great,thanks for the advice I will post my progress as I get this project done.

[bobsticks]

Hey TommyT,

Welcome to the forum.You've received some very good advice. To expand a bit on why, I can tell you (also from experience) that Sony makes some truly underpowered, user-unfriendly, and generally janky receivers until you get to their upper lines. You'll be very pleasantly surprised in the differences between a low or mid level Sony and one from any one of the competing brands already listed. I prefer Onkyo but your opinion may vary.

Klipsch is also a good suggestion for home theater along with the Definitive Technology brand. One advantage is that Klipsch offers a very high sensitivity, meaning the load to drive the speaker is significantly less. A lot of speakers require external amps to really get juiced up and that can get costly.
One way to tell will be the sensitivity rating measured in a Db figure. For use exclusively with a receiver you'll probably want to look at something 96 or 98, higher would be nice, but again, generally more expensive. Also pay attention to the "Ohm rating" of the speaker. For this you'll want to look for something like an 8 (some receivers are capable of convincingly pushing a 6 ohm load but they are few and far between).

Good luck and have fun.

PS. Just an aside, but you may want to calibrate your system in a 5.1 set-up and move up from there. The first system I set up I used all three rear speakers. It wasn't until I adjusted the placement of rear left and right, properly calibrated and added the rear center that the sound became more coherent and less mushy from behind...and nobody likes a mushy behind :) Even now, in a small to medium sized room I prefer 5.1.

[tommytick]

Thanks Bob, I've been doing a little more research and im leaning toward the Onkyo TX-SR603X 7.1.Do you think this would be a good entry level receiver?Im thinking im going to scrap my whole existing setup and move the cerwin re 30's upstairs.Im also reading about the mic that comes for the auto setup and im not sure this is a good idea or not.

[pixelthis]

Thanks Bob, I've been doing a little more research and im leaning toward the Onkyo TX-SR603X 7.1.Do you think this would be a good entry level receiver?Im thinking im going to scrap my whole existing setup and move the cerwin re 30's upstairs.Im also reading about the mic that comes for the auto setup and im not sure this is a good idea or not.
It will work fine, but a meter only cost 30 bucks.
A friend has an onkyo with this, it seems to work pretty good, if you dont have much
experience with this it might be the ticket.
He likes his onkyo, and I have an integra (a higher line of onkyo), these guys not only make nice receivers they also care about audio quality.
And dont be put off by the reletively low price of klipsch, they are made in CHINA
I was doubtfull about this but mine sound great, I got the upper mid line rb series
for around 1700 including sub, but could have gotten a set a lot cheaper.
These are cheap in price but not cheaply made, my rears run 300 pair but would make great mains, my center was 300$ but they had ones cheaper.
Very happy with mine, and the horn tweeters help with one lung amps:)

[tommytick]

Thanks Pixelthis,
I belive you guys have me pointed in the right direction.Im glad I stumbled on to this site.:thumbsup:

[pixelthis]

Check out some of the reveiws on this site, they arent pro reveiws but give you some idea of what the owners think.
Also the photo galleries have exlelent pics of some of the guys systems, some have some pretty good layouts, I've gotten some good info just from seeing how someone else
did something, and its fun besides:thumbsup: