There's people who think a $12k pair of speakers is the future... and there's the 90+% of the population with budgets of a thousand bucks or less for their HT system.
"Make perfect sound" is the goal for those who can afford such a pursuit. For the rest, it's "Make sound."
It may be 12 K now, but good designs will come at much lower price points.
The current state of affairs is unacceptable and leads to massive customer resistance.
What is available now is crazy. It is limiting as most rooms are not suitable for surround sound, and aesthetics are a massive barrier.
Take our closest friends here. They have a lovely art deco home furnished to the period. They would love to have a nice sound system to play their TV through. There is nothing that really fits the bill now. Having to place a receiver with seven or 11 amps in there on the grounds of economies of scale is just insane. The room is suitable for two elegant speakers of reasonable size. So those speakers would fit the bill, and I think could be controlled from their TV and nothing else.
Right now, their only option is a Sound Bar, since their TV is unintelligible. What is on offer now just does not cut it.
There are products now, that I think building a good active speaker with DSP is getting in range, if not already in range of the home constructor.
You should be able to put together a good AV system and just two speakers and no sub.
Good speakers do not need a center channel. In my family room system it would not be in anyway improved with a center channel speaker.
My wife can not tell the difference if I switch my in wall system from 2 to 3 channel and back. I am agreeing with BBC engineering more and more, that a center channel is not necessary and in the vast majority of systems is a detriment. I can tell you for certain that good speakers do not really require a center speaker.
