Need Speaker Suggestions

[bvbomber]

I am new to home theaters and I just received a Marantz SR6001 AV Reveiver for my birthday. I have a nice HDTV and want to not avoid doing this AVR and injustice by not providing it nice speakers to work with.

The speakers, which I have had since 1991, are Advent prodigy towers. Though these are nice speakers, I need suggestions on whether or not I should simply add more speakers to complete the 7.1 surround sound or if I should just purchase a match set.

First of all, let me tell you about the size of my home theater.
The room is 13'x30' with the TV at one end and a kitchen at the other end. I would like to mount the rear and side speekers up high, possibly in the cealing.

My budget is about $400 but I may be able to sqeeze out a bit more if the general feedback suggests it to get a great sound.

I love watching movies and have never owned a surround sound system. I also like playing my wii so whatever you can say about that would also be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

[blackraven]

For now with a $400 budget, I would just go with front channel speakers a very good center channel and a decent sub like the Mirage S8 and forget about rear channel until you have more money. I dont run rear channels and I dont feel I'm missing too much. I had a pair of 600 series B&W's as rear channels and returned them.

A matched set will give you matching sound. You have to ask yourself, what is more important- HT sound or 2ch music. If its music stick with what you already have.

[johnny p]

The new B&W's are a great deal (although going up in price due to the poor performance of the U.S. Dollar) the 686's were $450 for a pair, and their sound honestly rivals that of the 705's......... get a pair of those...... Front, surrounds...... it doesn't matter.... The sound amazing and don't command a lot of real estate.

[Kran30]

Currently i was looking at Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 $140

[blackraven]

I think most people here would not recommned Klipsch. To stay in that $400 budget, check out the infinity Primus 162's for your fronts and th 152's for your rear. www.crutchfield.com has the 162's onsale for $99 each. They are a great budget speaker. Check out www.stereophile.com and look up the very good reviews they got. They also reviewed the 150's which was last years model of the 152's. They got good reviews.
You might also want to consider doing the PSB alpha B1's which was stereophiles budget speaker of the year. You'll definitely need a sub with either of those, but I think the infinitiy's go lower.

[herm0016]

the infinity's are great. i have a set of 150's and the matching 10 inch powered sub. they are really great speakers for the price, i got mine for about 50 per speaker about a year ago. they sound great and do not require a lot of power, I used a small 20 watt home made amp to power them for a bit and it worked very well.