Hello all,
First time poster needing help with system as home is in process f being built.
I am fortunate to not have to deal with WAF (wife acceptance factor) as my girl is extremely cool. I am contemplating "in wall" vs free or tower speaker system for surround sound system. My priorities are movies and music. I can stretch my budget up to right around 10k for equipment and installation.
What do you recommend as far as In wall vs free standing? Also what brands and or systems?? I met with an installer today that recommended Episode speakers (in wall). Never heard of them until today. Installers seem to love them. I personally have read a ton about the klipsch thx ultra 2 and also the lower priced rF-82. The thx ultra 2is a little outside my budget and it also seems just a tad bulky for a living room.
I'm pretty lost as to what company to give my money to so any and all opinions would be greatly appreciated...especially on the topic of in wall vs tower
Thanks guys.
Matty
I would go with free standing speakers if WAF isn't a factor because of several factors:
1) Hard to get a vibration free in-wall cabinet and harder to make the wall resonant and vibration free. A resonating/vibrating wall mucks up the sound
2) Dispersion gets all mucked up which affects imaging which is very important with music.
People either hate or love Klipsch. There is no in between. I would seriously audition them with music to see if you handle the brightness of their tweeter horns.
Other companies I would look at are PSB, Emotiva, Salk, Assends, Revel, KEF, B&W, etc.
What I would do is to take a pad of paper with you, write down the make and model of each speaker you audition and what you liked and disliked about the speakers you were auditioning. Was the bass tight and deep or was it boomy and loose sounding? Were the mids life like or were they hollow or just too pronounced? Was the treble irritating and harsh or were they dark and not revealing or were they smooth that made you want to listen for more? How was the imaging?
Bring music with you that you are very familiar with and know quite well. To make it easier to audition HT speaker systems, listen to the main speakers in 2 channel mode with music. Music is much harder to reproduce accurately then a movie soundtrack so if the speakers do well with music, then they will do well with HT. Speakers that do HT well may not do well with music. When auditioning the center channel of the same brand and series as the main speakers, pick a difficult source like an announcer that mumbles a lot. If you can understand what the mumbling announcer is saying, then you have a good center channel.
I would go to speciality stores first and start auditioning speakers first instead of going to the internet first. Once your likes are determined, you can mention them here and fellow members can make internet brand recommendations based on your likes/dislikes. The speciality stores are better setup acoustically then the big box stores which will make auditioning a little easier. It will give you an idea of what you like in a speaker.
Keep track of what amp or receiver is powering the speakers you're auditioning. Try to get a receiver/amp that closest resembles what you have or want to get. It just reduces another variable when auditioning speakers.
One thing to keep note off; when auditioning speakers, make sure the volume levels are matched between the different speaker pairs because the louder speaker pair will always sound better. Listen to levels that you think you would listen to most of the time because that’s how you are going to be using them most of the time.
