Quote Originally Posted by bluesdoggy
Thank you for the feedback, please keep it coming.

I had considered buying a piece at a time...and while this may seem stupid (read: is stupid) i'll just go ahead and say i'd rather get it all now and not get as much quality than buy a piece at a time. That shows a serious lack of patience i know... but i know myself and think that i'll either spend more than i should to flesh out the partial system quicker, or buy all at once.

Also, i don't think i'd be oppossed to buying used, so long as i could find the stuff new somewhere to listen to first. I don't think i'm able to buy something I haven't been able to try out first hand.
Well, then I suggest that you give a listen to a pair of decent speakers in the $600 range in virtual surround mode, and compare that to the playback with a 5.1 speaker package. If the 5.1 playback is good enough for you, then go with that. But, if the sound quality with the two speakers in virtual mode is enough to give pause, then consider patience a virtue.

It took me two years to finish piecing together my system, and while I don't recommend that long an interval for everybody, I knew going in that I had a minimum level of audio quality that I was gunning for. And none of the 5.1 speaker packages in the sub-$1,000 range that I heard provided anything close to full frequency range performance. So, I wound up putting my full speaker budget into the two mains and incrementally adding on as funds became available.

Once you go into the $600 price point, then you're getting into some compellingly good speaker options. If anything, spend some time listening and comparing. Even a budget system like the one you're looking for is a big investment. You wouldn't buy stocks without doing research, or a car without a test drive, and for similar reasons, you shouldn't buy a HT system without knowing something about what your budget will buy you. Impatience is the devil when it comes to audio, and especially with speakers. The concept of a "home theater in a box" depends on consumers' impatience and convenience, not on sound quality.