(Long...sorry)Need some help deciding on speakers for cinema room

[mjirvine]

Hi all,

I am looking for some advice as I seem to be going round in circles myself.

I am moving house soon and at last get to have a dedicated home cinema room. I currently have an LG 42" plasma, Denon 2805 amp, KEF Q4 5.1 AV pack and a velodyne CHT-10R in my living room. I plan to keep the plasma in the living room of teh new house.

I am going to set up a projector system in my new room and plan on taking the 2805 for this room also.

Projector will probably be a panasonic AE700 for a decent price. DVD is a samsung 945 and may set up an HTPC if I can get it quiet enough.

here comes the questions....

Q1

I am very undecided on what speakers to get for my cinema room it falls into a few main categories.

1. keep the Q4s etc in the living room and get new speakers for the new room. If I were to do this I am thinking of anthony gallos or MA Radius 275 AV pack speakers. is there any others I shoudl eb considering for around the same price (£1k-1.5K). I may change my mind completelyto get decent floor standers instead but I doubt it due to WAF.

2. use the Q4s for the cinema room and get new living room speakers, possibly a yamaha AVR/speaker pack. Are these good enough for this? will I be very dissapointed with a yamaha AVR/speakers set after the Q4s (which I think sound great)

Q2

Should I use my velodyne sub in the cinema room or get the matching sub with the aforementioned speaker sets. how would they compare? never that impressed with the CHT-10R but it is undoubtably my fault as I noticed yesterday I am only using a standard phono cable to connect it!!! how did that happen, I don't know!

Q3

What screen to use (yes I know this is the wrong forum, but I thought I would keep it all together). cost reasons dictate a manual screen at present and I like big screens so those aspects are sorted. how do you decide on screen colour and gain without testing them all out??


finally, I do intend to audition as many as possible. Unfortunately the only place I know in glasgow is sevenmoaks and they seem to scoff at LCD nowadays and try to sell me things I don't want/can't afford. Any other ideas on where to demo all this stuff.

thanks for reading, hope someone can give me some ideas.

Michael

[mjirvine]

forgot to mention a few things.

room is 16ftx10ft
while I enjoy stereo, main use will be Home cinema. say 80/20 split HC:Stereo

Michael
(and sorry for all the typos I have now noticed)

[Ian J]

If you are contemplating lifestyle speakers why are you thinking of putting them into the dedicated home cinema room whilst the "proper" speakers remain in the living room. I would have thought that the other way around would be more appropriate.

If you are unimpressed with your subwoofer i don't think that a change of cable will do much good. Assuming that you have positioned it as best possible and set it up optimally I would suggest that it's the sub itself that is the problem although you don't say what you don't like about it.

[mjirvine]

Conversely enough my wife actually likes the Q4s in teh lounge as she listens to CDs there etc and they fit in with the decorations. The reason for "lifestyle" speakers in teh cinema room would be that when the screen is up, the room could also be used occassionallyas a lounge/sitting room with discrete speakers. I may be able to convince my better half to use another room instead of course. If I could do this I was thinking about keeping the Q4s/Q6c and using them as surround/rear centre and buying either Q4/Q6c or Q5/Q9c for the front, hopefully for not much as they have been superceded. what do you think. Or what other suggestions would you have?

with the sub I find thatwhen I try to set it up it either sounds very boomy or else if I set it so that I cannot specifically hear the sub (as I thought shoudl be ideal) I can tell very little difference to having it switched off. you are probably right in that it is probably not correcty set up as there is currently only one spot in teh room where it fits and I havent moved it around to see if it improves. I thought that using a cheapy phono cable would make quite a big difference compared to a decent shields coaxial??

Michael

[Ian J]

See if you can grab a demo of the M&K K series speakers as I think that they are miles better than the Gallo (haven't heard the Radius) and they will work well with your existing sub.