Help me chose rear speakers for my system

qntris

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Hello Guys,

I have recently decided to enter in the hi-fi world and am in a process of building my first system.

I have AV receiver Marantz NR1504 with Tannoy Mercury V4i fronts, Tannoy Mercury VCi center and a Samsung DV6500 Smart TV.
I am now planning to get rear speakers and a sub for a complete 5.1 surround.
I do not want to pay a lot so pretty much I am looking for mid priced ones, so I am wondering over the below models:
Wharfedale Diamond 9.0 - around 40 pounds in RicherSounds
JBL control 1 - 50 pounds
HKTS 5 satellite speakers - 48 pounds

I am opened for suggestions but the only requirement is that they are not too big as I need them wall mounted in my new apartment.
 
I would seriously consider shooting for the Tannoy Mercury V1

There is more to be said for tonal matching of rears than people tend to say, in my opinion.

Then save for a good SUB
 
Thank you for your reply, the thing is that I was trying to cut the costs a bit and the V1s are around £120. Are the above mentioned speakers very bad or if so any other suggestions for speakers that will fit well in my system?
 
Tannoy Mercury V1i Bookshelf Speaker Nintronics.co.uk

it's a stretch but might be very worth it in the longer run, then save hard for a SUB!

Or you could get SUB and rears now sure, but end up with much lower quality stuff, I would buy the better rears and save for a SUB tbh but it's up to you, I know nothing about the other speakers you have listed.

There is no right or wrong, I am just advising an alternative possibility to buying something which will get you up and running quicker but will not live up to the rest of your system.
 
Or you could always sell the floorstanders and get 4x V1i and a nice SUB - winner! (that's what I would do)

gotta play it smart on a tight budget.
 
Agree with thelethalone with regards to tonal matching. I use Missions M3 range in my 5.1 set up but for a long time had a JBL Control One as a centre.

The JBLs are great little speakers but once I got the matching centre speaker for my range it transformed the sound.
 
I would second getting the V1s as rears. You really want all 5 speakers to be the same make and model to get the best overall surround sound experience. I feel it is well worth the extra money and not worth compromising your system for the small saving that will be made. If money is tight then look to see if you can get some V1s secondhand.
 
i was always lead to believe that only the fronts (L,C,R) only needed to be matched up. and it didnt matter what surrounds you had ? what happens when you have some fronts were there is no matching (make-model) surrounds to match up with ?
 
The ideal system is to have the same speaker in each location around the system i.e. you would use V1s for fronts, centre and rears. Anything other than this is a compromise from this ideal. How much of a compromise is dependent on how different you go from this ideal. Staying within the same make/model for all speakers is probably only a small compromise but having different speakers for each location would be a much larger compromise.
There is at least one member here who has bought expensive speakers (MK and PMC) and during the various changes has had mismatched rears albeit very good quality speakers in each location. They have heard significant improvements when they got the system back to matching speakers all around. So the rears are important to get right (your system will only be as good as your weakest element). You will hear it is less important to match fronts to rears but it is still better to have matching if at all possible.
What speakers are you thinking about that have a matching centre but not surrounds to match (since could use 2 centres as surrounds or the same speakers as the front L/R as surrounds)?
 
There is at least one member here who has bought expensive speakers (MK and PMC) and during the various changes has had mismatched rears albeit very good quality speakers in each location. They have heard significant improvements when they got the system back to matching speakers all around. So the rears are important to get right (your system will only be as good as your weakest element). You will hear it is less important to match fronts to rears but it is still better to have matching if at all possible.

That'll be me...once I got the full matching set the whole system just went up a notch. Then during transition from PMC to MK I had some older, smaller MK surrounds and I lost it again until the matching MK surrounds were fitted.

Obviously I'm a convert, but I've been playing around with different surround set ups over the last 16 or so years and yet only about a year ago heard a full matched set in my own room. Of course my other set ups 'worked' but they sounded like separate speakers rather than just sound all around me. However, back then I was very impressed at just hearing something behind me, even if it was only due to Dolby ProLogic, so I was probably less critical than I am now...

If you have to wait a little longer then I'd still say get the V1s, maybe even some ex display ones, or a used pair in the classifieds since there is little to go wrong with speakers if they are working OK when you buy them and are cosmetically good.
 
Thanks a lot guys. I am actually not planning to sell the V4s but I like the idea of buying a second hand V1s. The thing is that I actually find it hard to find used ones - can you guys assist a bit with some offers on the net?

Cheers
 
(since could use 2 centres as surrounds or the same speakers as the front L/R as surrounds)?

using 2 centres as surrounds ? how would that work with people that use the really large centres ?
and people like myself who have large floorstanding speakers at front but dont want nor need large floorstanders for the surrounds ?
 
i was always lead to believe that only the fronts (L,C,R) only needed to be matched up. and it didnt matter what surrounds you had ? what happens when you have some fronts were there is no matching (make-model) surrounds to match up with ?

Might be a bit contentious, but if you chose front left/right speakers that have no matching surrounds, then maybe you just have to make do with whatever you can, but probably somone making that decision consciously is more focused on having great stereo performance over fully matched surround performance. It's just one of the possible compromises that we all have to consider when putting together a system.

using 2 centres as surrounds ? how would that work with people that use the really large centres ?
and people like myself who have large floorstanding speakers at front but dont want nor need large floorstanders for the surrounds ?

As per above, IMVHO having large floorstanders means that (unless you have an AT screen to put the third floorstander behind) that you probably won't have a truly matching centre either: While companies sell 'matching' centre speakers to their floor standers, they are much smaller, less volume and even have different drivers in them, which means that they can't possibly sound exactly the same as the floorstanders. After all, if they did then you could just buy two more of the smaller (probably cheaper) centre speakers. Of course they should be voiced to be a good match to the floorstanders, but that's not the same as being an exact match IMHO.

So in these set ups the 5.1 performance is already compromised to start with IMHO, so non matching surrounds is less important if the centre doesn't even match, which for me is critical. So much so that I ran with a phantom centre for 3-4 months while I sold some kit and saved up for the third MP150, rather than run with a mismatched centre.

Again, it's not as if the system won't 'work' as you'll still get sound out of the speakers after all, just that the blend between the different speakers won't be as good as with fully matched. Plenty of people run with such systems though and are perfectly happy (15 out of 16 years so far I did too), it just depends on your personal priorities and budget.
 
Guys,

I found a good deal for Tannoy speakers but unfortunately they are available for in-store purchase only. Is there a courier in UK chance that I can transfer to the money using PayPal for example so that they can pick it up from the store and ship it to a London location where my courier (that ships to my country) will take it?

Thanks
 
It's not clear to me what "your country" is.
 
I am located in Bulgaria and I do have a courier that will deliver any shipment (ordered online) to me here. In this particular case the speakers are available for "in-store purchase" only. Thus I need some courier in UK to buy the speakers and send them to the UK location of my dealer (from Bulgaria).
 
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I would have thought that the commission for a third party shopper to purchase/process/deliver would outweigh the cost of using a seller who will deliver to Bulgaria.
 
Ahhh the old classic, how does one 'buy by phone'

Well, it starts with phoning them, this is just a stab in the dark though.

I would imagine it will get interesting when you give them your address though.
 

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