Best 7.1 speaker setup for £2000

Petey

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If you had £2000 to spend on a 7.1 speaker system what would be your speakers of choice ?
 
Currently my £2k would go on:

Monitor Audio RS6 fronts @ £599
Monitor Audio RS LCR centre @ £249
Monitor Audio RSFX Rears @ £399 (by 2) EDIT: wire sides as dipoles, and rears as bipoles !
BK Monolith sub @ £399

Note that the prices are from online stores, a dealer should be able to fix you a package deal! Also: the MA deserve a decent amp!
 
can heartily agree with the above setup, i run the same but using the previous gen Silver S versions.....have heard the new ones as well and they just as good if not in some areas better :)

only thing i havnt heard is the Monolith sub, i use a Strata 5 in my setup....
(however at current price is around £2-300 more than the Monolith, how it compares i dont personally know, i get the feeling people will claim the Monolith is the best choice because it rumbles more and louder with movies, dunno about music how it stands up tho....however if WAF is mixed in then the REL will win out most times...lol)
 
Thanks for the info guys, I will have to setup a demo and listen to them myself.

I have an SVS PB10 sub so I would probably keep this but change my other speakers.

I would be running the speakers off a DENON AVCA1SE, 7x170 according to the manual.

Do the Monitor Audio speakers favour movies or music, as I would like something thats ideally good at both.
 
ooh, if u got a sub and a powerful amp, then move up to the new GS range (or if you can still find them being sold the older GR version, they'll be at a discount price and more than worth the moolah!)

you could grab a pair of GS10's for fronts at £800, GS Centre for £500 and pair of GSFX's for rears at £900......ok thats blowing the budget by £200 but im sure they would climb down a little on the price buying them all at once....
(if you went GR and could get them, pair of GR20's for around £800, GR Centre for £350 and still get a pair of GSFX's, apparently they are a much bigger improvement over the GRFX's than the other GS speakers are over the GR range)......thats pretty much £2k spot on......

first option gives you very good sound quality in films or music, altho the fronts for stereo are obviously limited to 40hz but thats still pretty low sounding and you can always send on lower stuff to the sub u got if it can keep up with their speed and attack.......
second options gives you still very good sound quality in films, and almost as good in music, mostly the difference is in the treble area, the GR20's lack ever so slightly the crispness of the GS10's....however midrange isnt too much different, midbass is similar, and obviously being floorstanders their bass delves a lot deeper in this case i think down to 32hz.....so not really necessary to try and intregrate the sub for stereo stuff.....

oh and going up to the Gold range opens up other option of possibly getting a dedicate stereo amp for the front left and right......a nice powerful MF A5 would work a treat or something similar (Primare for example do a good £1,500 amp)......its surprising how much extra it will get out of those speakers compared to the Denon (a good amp itself but too much stuff going on in it, keep it pure for stereo ;-)

anyhow, enjoy the extra food for thought....i'm sure others will chip in with other makes worth considering (B&W spring to mind for that money....or ProAc, Ruark plus a few others)
 
sorry, as a direct answer to save reading all my waffle...lol

Monitor Audio Silver RS are about 50/50......as good with movies as they are with music, they keep it fairly clean and tight, can be bright but with Denon they are normally tamed enough to make long listening a pleasure but not boring.....

the GR/GS range are just gorgeous with music.....and as still cut the mustard very well with movies.....dunno if you like multichannel music, but tromping out a bit of pomp and circumstance on GR/GS 5.1 setup at massive volume is like sitting at the proms front row!...lol

they can do this with stereo music too, altho moreso with the floorstanders obviously than the bookshelfs.....either way, more than worth taking an afternoon off work to demo the setups......(probably find if a store near you does still sell the GR's they wont have them on demo, only the GS's...but tbh the signature sound to them is similar so i wouldnt worry too much about listening to GS then buying GR if you want to get the floorstanders in......if bookshelf is good enough for you then i'd say its worth investing in the GS......besides, you can always upgrade int he future, buy a pair of GS20's for fronts and move the GS10's to back surround duties (seeing as your amp is 7.1...heh)
 
Thanks for all the info Knyght_byte. I had a demo today at a local sevenoaks sound & vision.

Demo 1:

RS6 - fronts
RSLCR - center
RSFX - surrounds

I have to admit I was blown away with the quality of this setup, especially considering the cost.

Demo 2:

GS10 - fronts
GSLCR - center
RSFX - surrounds

Blown away by this setup as well, it was an improvement over demo 1, but subtle improvements not in your face.

The sub for both demos was a REL.

Of course the subtle improvements are enough to make me re-think my descision.

After discussion with the very helpful assistant, we came up with the idea of having 3x GSLCR for the front, center and right, then having GSFX for surrounds. This only makes up a 5.1 system instead of 7.1 as stated in my original post, but due to the lack of 7.1 material I think it would be money well spent as I can always add another pair of surrounds at a later date.

This breaks my initial budget of £2000 by £400. This isn't ideal but I would rather stretch my budget to get something I would be completely satisfied with, rather than cutting corners and living with the fact that I wish I stumped up the extra cash for the GS speakers.

This isn't taking anything away from the RS speakers, as I still think they are expectionally good.
 
Sorry to hijack slightly but:

wire sides as dipoles, and rears as bipoles

I thought the terms meant the same thing? Can you explain?

Thanks :)
 
Petey said:
Thanks for all the info Knyght_byte. I had a demo today at a local sevenoaks sound & vision.

Demo 1:

RS6 - fronts
RSLCR - center
RSFX - surrounds

I have to admit I was blown away with the quality of this setup, especially considering the cost.

Demo 2:

GS10 - fronts
GSLCR - center
RSFX - surrounds

Blown away by this setup as well, it was an improvement over demo 1, but subtle improvements not in your face.

The sub for both demos was a REL.

Of course the subtle improvements are enough to make me re-think my descision.

After discussion with the very helpful assistant, we came up with the idea of having 3x GSLCR for the front, center and right, then having GSFX for surrounds. This only makes up a 5.1 system instead of 7.1 as stated in my original post, but due to the lack of 7.1 material I think it would be money well spent as I can always add another pair of surrounds at a later date.

This breaks my initial budget of £2000 by £400. This isn't ideal but I would rather stretch my budget to get something I would be completely satisfied with, rather than cutting corners and living with the fact that I wish I stumped up the extra cash for the GS speakers.

This isn't taking anything away from the RS speakers, as I still think they are expectionally good.

hmm....for movie purposes the 3 x GSLCR would be good for complete tonal evenness across the front.......but i'm not so sure it would be as good for music in stereo...i dont know as i havnt tried that combo, i doubt many have given shops will usually only have one in stock...lol....if music is still a high factor i'd suggest sticking with GS10's as aside from knocking £200 off the price of 2 centres you can also later on buy a shexy integrated amp to run them off for music and get far more out of them than your surround amp could hope to....lol

did u try the GS10's hooked up to a stereo amp? i'd recommend you go back and try it, get ready to be blown away again...heh (try MF A3.5 or A5 and Primare i30 definitely, give Arcam a go but i found the Arcams tried to tidy the bass up too much and the vocals wernt quite so open and airy....oh and midbass drums lacked snap, but i like a LOT of snap so thats more my fault the last one..lol)

edit: forgot to say, there isnt the most massive difference over Silver with Gold for the movies as you found out, mostly subtle, its the music where the Golds really shine it on.....multi or stereo....but with stereo you really do need to blow some cash on the amp, and preferably the source too...these speakers are just astounding when matched right...
 
mhuk05 said:
Sorry to hijack slightly but:



I thought the terms meant the same thing? Can you explain?

Thanks :)


bipole is where you have drivers firing in more than one direction (essentialy 2 directions hence bi, altho some vary it such as MA's RSFX which have a midrange firing forward like a monopole but two tweeters firing off axis to it to help spread the sound around a bit)

dipole is where one or more drivers are firing out of phase to other drivers in the speaker (usually a bipole arrangement driver wise just wired up differently), this helps to really diffuse the sound and make it difficult to localise the sounds, its especially good in a larger room where it helps create less of a sweetspot so multiple people can listen and enjoy surround......its not so useful for multichannel music tho, also smaller room doesnt benefit so much in my opinion, however each to their own, we all know what sounds good to ourselves so its always best to work on that....heh

oh you can also get tripoles which fire upwards as well if i remember right, M&K do them i know......

dontcha just love this hobby? :devil:
 
Thanks for that :)

I don't use multi speaker for music (I have MS903s for rears). How do you wire them up differently? Is it a bipole with the wires reversed or are they made that way?

Fun fun fun...
 
it all depends on the models....

with my speakers, on the back you have two sets of terminals, like you would for biwiring, except instead of biwiring you just single wire to one set, then run a small length of wire from that set of terminals to the above ones, you either wire them in phase (red to red, black to black) for bipole or switch them to out of phase (red to black, black to red) to make the speaker dipole........however the new revamp of my speakers has a switch instead to do this rather than manually fiddle around.......

i dont know about your speakers.....if they have two sets of terminals on the back it might work but please dont try it without getting someone else to confirm, i dont know your speakers so i couldnt comment safely......
(either get someone on here who has them to tell you if its possible by starting your own thread, title it 'Can i turn my MS309 Bipoles in to Dipoles?'......of course here i am assuming your 309's are bipoles? if they are normal style bookshelf speakers then i very much doubt its possible at all, or worthwhile either even if it was...)
 
mhuk05 said:
Sorry to hijack slightly but:


I thought the terms meant the same thing? Can you explain?

Thanks :)

Saw this now, but Knyght_byte got you covered !
 
mhuk05 said:
Only one set of terminals. Described as bi-poles

Thanks for the info.


aye, just bipole then.....tbh unless you in a large room dipoles wont make so much difference, in fact in a small room they could even harm the surround field.....i know they do in my smaller bedroom i was in a while ago......
 
Knyght_byte said:
hmm....for movie purposes the 3 x GSLCR would be good for complete tonal evenness across the front.......but i'm not so sure it would be as good for music in stereo...i dont know as i havnt tried that combo, i doubt many have given shops will usually only have one in stock...lol....if music is still a high factor i'd suggest sticking with GS10's as aside from knocking £200 off the price of 2 centres you can also later on buy a shexy integrated amp to run them off for music and get far more out of them than your surround amp could hope to....lol

did u try the GS10's hooked up to a stereo amp? i'd recommend you go back and try it, get ready to be blown away again...heh (try MF A3.5 or A5 and Primare i30 definitely, give Arcam a go but i found the Arcams tried to tidy the bass up too much and the vocals wernt quite so open and airy....oh and midbass drums lacked snap, but i like a LOT of snap so thats more my fault the last one..lol)

edit: forgot to say, there isnt the most massive difference over Silver with Gold for the movies as you found out, mostly subtle, its the music where the Golds really shine it on.....multi or stereo....but with stereo you really do need to blow some cash on the amp, and preferably the source too...these speakers are just astounding when matched right...

After listening to the GS10's as fronts I was convinced this was the right descision, the reasons that made me think GSLCR would be a better choice are this:

1. GS10 are rear ported so they would need to be away from the wall. GSLCR are sealed enclosure, so can be positioned close to the wall which is a bonus for me as I do have contraints on the space available.

2. The frequency response of both GS10 and GSLCR are the same 40Hz - 45Khz. The power handling of the GSLCR is higher at 150w against 100w for the GS10.

3. GSLCR has an extra bass/mid driver than the GS10's.

4. Although it would be slightly cheaper to buy GS10's instead of GSLCR, the GS10's would need stands, which cost almost £200, the price difference would be minimal.

As you mentioned not many dealers have 3x GSLCR speakers so I couldn't actually demo this, so I am basing my idea on tech specs and what I heard from the GSLCR as a center and GS10's as fronts.

At this current time I don't intend buying a new amp, I'm very happy with the one I've got at the moment. Having owned a high-end set of Definitive Technology speakers in the past, I have a good idea of what my amp is capable of musically and for movies. Its no slouch in either. I know there are better amps out there which are better for music and for movies, I just believe my amp is more than capable of doing the GS speakers justice. I'm not ruling out a new amp at some point in the future, just not at the moment.

My amp does have a feature to switch off all unnesessary video circuitry and have a pure direct feed for a music source.

My kit:

DENON AVC A1SE (amp)
DENON 2200 (dvd)
MARANTZ CD63 mkII signature (cd player)
 
well, certainly on the space constraint then the 3 x GSLCR could work out to be the ideal choice....altho tbh the GS/GR10's dont boom too much close to a wall and you can bung them......but as you say the GSLCR has twin mid/bass drivers, so it can certainly crank up the volume, and you got the power on tap from the amp to handle it as well....

what you could try if you wanted to get some idea of the musicality of the GSLCR is to go back for a demo with a GSLCR on one stand and a GS10 on the other stand.......have a listen for a while, then swap them over, relisten to the same tracks........might as least give you an idea what your looking at.....
 

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