Hi there! Welcome to the forum
I have several thoughts and recommendations to offer you about your speaker system.
First up, thank you for providing that picture and some info about what you already have and what you're looking to spend! It's a very big help to know what we're dealing with.
So, you've got quite a large room there. And many seats in a wide and deep seating area. Those factors, combined with some of the limitations of your Denon 1908 AV Receiver, are going to present several challenges. But I will do my best to explain, and I'll try to recommend products that will work well with your situation.
With a large room, and your primary listening being movies, TV and games, you're going to want speakers with high output (loud) capabilities. To further complicate matters, your 1908 Receiver does not have pre-outs for the speakers. That means you will be forced to power your speakers with the amps that are built into the 1908. You do not have the option to use a more powerful, external amplifier. Thankfully, the 1908 has pretty decent amps, but they are not hugely powerful. They are not meant for 4 ohm or lower impedance speakers.
So all of that is going to mean that you will want to purchase very efficient, easy to drive speakers that are capable of playing loud without distortion. And that's perfectly fine! We simply need to be aware of your requirements so that we can keep them in mind when selecting speakers
Next, with such a wide seating area, I would highly recommend that you include a dedicated Center speaker in your setup. A good pair of Front Left & Right speakers can create a very convincing "phantom" Center on their own. But even with very good Front L/R speakers, that illusion of a Center image really only works when you are seated in between the two Front L/R speakers. When you have a very wide seating area like yours, the seats on the outside edges will not get a very convincing Center image. Having a dedicated Center speaker will solve that problem, and anchor dialogue to the screen, where it is supposed to be.
In regards to surround speakers: they are not entirely necessary. And having such a large area of seats will also make it more of a challenge to get a good surround effect, especially for the seats that are farthest back. You also have quite an open floor plan with openings everywhere. That said, a good pair of diffuse surround speakers mounted up high on the side walls will do quite well for enveloping the entire seating area and "blanketing" the audience with surround effects, just like in a full sized movie theater. Given your budget, it might be best to forego surround speakers for the moment. But if you ever want to add some surround speakers, that is what I would recommend. Check out the
THX Guidelines for Speaker Placement . You can see that a 5.1 speaker setup calls for diffuse surround speakers mounted up high and to the sides of the seats. So that's exactly what I would recommend.
Finally, with such a large room and seating area, you are going to want very capable subwoofers. And more than one subwoofer would be preferable. Although your budget might make that difficult. Having more than one subwoofer isn't so much about being able to play louder, it's more about each seat having smoother and more even bass. In any room, bass frequencies will bounce around - especially off of hard, flat surfaces like your walls, floor and ceiling. So you've got these sound waves bouncing all around your room, and bass waves, being very long and powerful, will produce standing waves. If you picture a wave with its smooth up and down, crest and trough shape, you can imagine how some seats will wind up being right where there's a crest, and other seats will wind up being right where there's a trough. The people seated in the crests will hear bass that is way too loud, while the people seated in the troughs will hear almost no bass at all! And with standing waves, those peak and trough positions never change, so you're stuck with way too loud bass for some seats, almost no bass at all for other seats, and only a few lucky seats that are not in a peak or a trough get the bass the way it is supposed to sound.
Having more than one subwoofer allows you to break up these standing waves using interference. With the same bass coming from two or more different spots in your room, it's simply less likely that anyone will be sitting in a trough or a crest. The sound waves from one subwoofer might create a trough or a crest at a given seat, but the sound waves from the other subwoofer(s) will be a little bit different, so you get this sort of averaging out of the sound waves throughout the room, and almost everyone gets to enjoy the bass the way it is supposed to be - not too loud, and not too quiet
So with that understanding, let's look at some options. I'll start with the subwoofers:
Normally, in a room that size, I'd recommend a pair of very high output subwoofers. But those can be expensive!
The
HSU VTF-15H Dual Drive would be an excellent choice. But once you include shipping, these would take up your entire $2000 budget all on their own!
A rather new company - started by the same guys who started SVS back in the day -
Power Sound Audio offers the XV15 , which looks to be a tremendous deal for a very high output, very linear 15" subwoofer. They include shipping in their price. But again, a pair will set you back $1600, which leaves too little in the budget for speakers.
So if the budget cannot be increased, we'll need to look at some lower cost options.
The
Outlaw LFM-1 EX is essentially a clone of the older HSU VTF-3 MK3. With shipping, a pair comes to about $1475. This is about as good as it gets in terms of "bang for your buck". I personally wouldn't want to go less than this option in terms of price and output capabilities in the room that you showed. But with nearly $1500 spent after including the shipping cost, it once again leaves rather little in the budget for speakers. That said, if there's any way to stretch that $2000 budget to a larger amount, this is as low as I would go. And I really would want a pair of subwoofer in that room with that seating area. A single subwoofer will definitely be problematic at several of those seating positions.
If there's just no budging on the price, we start to get into subs that might struggle to cope with your room size.
The
HSU VTF-2 MK4 is a very good subwoofer, and the least expensive subwoofer I consider capable of "doing it all", by which I mean genuine extension down to 20Hz while retaining high accuracy and low distortion. A pair will be $1225 after shipping. Much more reasonable for the budget, but I worry a little bit about sheer output. They should be o...k... But you might be hitting their maximum output levels in that large, open room of yours.
So a final option would be the
Klipsch Reference RW-12D . The $500 price at Newegg is a lot higher now. It used to be on sale for $350, which made it a great deal when it was that cheap. At the moment I'm writing this, I'm not seeing it for less than $500 at any authorized sellers though. This Klipsch sub is not at the same quality level as any of the subs I've mentioned so far. But it can at least play quite loud, and will do an ok job of handling your room size. If you search around, you might be able to find this sub for a good sale price, which would make it a better value, and give you more room in the budget for speakers.
