2.1 Recomendation

[opinsky]

Hello,

I am planning a new home theater and due to complete lack of knowledge I am looking for help:

- I plan to project onto a screen which will sit in front of a large door that leads to a patio. Therefore, no room for a center speaker. The room where I plan for the HT is about 4m wide by 8m long.

- I dislike have wires running around my place, and try to have the number of speakers to a minimum

- I am a musician, and currently have 2 x 75W studio audio monitors from m-audio. I am very impressed by their clarity in all frequencies.

My questions are:

1) can I have a 5.1 or 7.1 system driving 2.1 speakers? What would I loose? How should I handle power requiremets (e.g: would a 5x40W system drive two 100W speakers?)

2) Would I be able to get the ".1" from the DVDs/Bluray even if my speakers are set-up as 2.1?

3) Is it a good idea to use self-powered studio monitors for a home theater setting?

Regards,OP

[j_garcia]

Yes you can use powered monitors, nothing wrong with that. There is a rahter lengthy thread here if you are interested, which can be located via search. If you are going to do 2.1 only for the forseeable future, I would not get a multichannel receiver, I would get a stereo receiver with a sub out or an integrated amp with preamp outputs so you can feed the sub signal (not crossed over in both cases). If you think you might expand to 4.1 or something more than 2.1, or you are considering Blu-ray or upscaling DVD, I'd be looking at a multichannel receiver for HDMI capabilities. You will not get the ".1" with a stereo receiver or integrated amp however, and there is only one integrated amp that I know of that has a built in crossover. With powered monitors, you might even be able to get away with just using a preamp to manage signals.