Quote Originally Posted by Kaiser Sosze
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What I have are Acoustic Image 6.5 mini tower speakers. The prince of white van speakers. I bought them when I was young and ignorant ,
Hey KS, it can happen to anybody. Geez, my little brother bought a pair of white van speakers (on the street, right out of the van) when he first moved out to LA. I felt somewhat responsible because I never schooled him in this hobby. He left them in LA with his old roommate, so I've never actually seen them and in fact have never seen "white van" speakers. So you at least have experienced something that many back woods country bumpkins like myself never will (until we go to the big city).

Anyhow, on to your quest for better sound. Take it in steps. I prefer bookshelf/standmount speakers because I'm cheap and you can get more audiophile attributes at a lower price point. Mostly, you're giving up bass extension. But, the size of your room may benefit from floorstanders. Pick your main L&R (front) speakers first. A decent pair of floorstanders that extend down to at least 35-40 Hz might set you back $1200-1700. Next, you may want to fill in the lowest bass from movie soundtracks with a subwoofer. Then get your matching center and surrounds. Here's an example:

Paradigm Studio 60s for front L&R
Subwoofer from HSU or SVS (around $500, but you can go higher with a B&W or something)
Paradigm's studio center
Paradigm Studio 20s (bookshelf) for surrounds

Pick a floorstander you like, but also listen to the center and surrounds from the same series because you might be adding them later. The surrounds don't have to be designed soley for surround duty. You can put together a nice system with 4 Studio 20s, for example. (The only reason I'm using Paradigm is because I remember their model #s, but you can also listen to B&W's 600 series and tons of others.) There's nothing wrong with going with 4 bookshelf speakers for fronts and surrounds (unless they're Bose cubes). You just might have to get your subwoofer a little sooner.

The only caveat I see is that it is possible that a series (like Paradigm's studios) could be discontinued or dramatically changed/revised before you're able to get the center and surrounds.

You can get more bang for your buck in the long run if you take it in steps. The biggest improvement I got for movies was adding a subwoofer to my front bookshelf speakers.