Good budget. Nice existing equipment. Let's do this right, shall we?
First, take about $800 and buy a
GIK Acoustics Room Kit. For your room size, I would highly recommend Package #2
Great sound is a partnership between the gear and the room. All too often, people only focus on the gear and forget all about the room itself. You have enough of a budget to really do your room right and make it into a much better acoustic environment. In terms of performance for the price, no one beats GIK. Their panels are almost as inexpensive as just building your own DIY panels! But their performance is second to none.
Do yourself a favor. Do your gear a favor. Acoustically treat your room so that the speakers you buy can truly sound their best!
Second, sell your existing subwoofer and get a truly great subwoofer. If you have only one primary seat and you don't care too much about having flat frequency response at several seats, you can "get away" with just one subwoofer and some very careful placement plus, perhaps, some EQ. If you have more than one seat that you care about and you want nice, linear, accurate bass response at all seating positions, you're going to need 2 subwoofers.
I prefer to always use 2 subwoofers so that the bass response will be more linear and even across all seating positions.
When it comes to a subwoofer that offers extremely linear response - even at high output levels where so many other subwoofers slope off - as well as low distortion for a rather low price, the best deal going is the
SVSound PB12-NSD
A pair of PB12-NSD will run you about $1200 with shipping included.
Regardless of what subwoofer(s) you buy, it is VITAL to decouple them from the floor. Sound doesn't just travel through the air, it can also travel through the very structure of your home. This structure-borne sound transmission is the reason why you (or your neighbors) can almost always hear bass thumping away, even if the higher frequencies are inaudible. Not only does structure-borne bass bother other people in your building, you will also hear it inside your theater as distortion. Decoupling your subwoofer greatly reduces the structure-borne transmission of the bass. The result is that other rooms in your building do not hear the bass nearly as loudly (happier neighbors is a good thing), but perhaps even more important - inside your theater, you are treated to "tighter" more accurate bass without the distortion added by the structure itself shaking along with the subwoofer!
This is not just a "tweek"; this is a MUST. The best device for decoupling your subwoofers is the
Auralex GRAMMA. With two PB12-NSD subs, spend $100 dollars for two Auralex GRAMMA.
So with the GIK room treatments, the two SVSound PB12-NSD subwoofers and the two Auralex GRAMMA decoupling risers, we have spent about $2100.
With your seating position, there is no need for 7 speakers. A 5 speaker setup will be better because you really need a substantial distance behind your seat in order to make the surround back (6th and 7th) speakers a necessity.
Since you watch movies a lot, I believe it would be worth your while to use diffuse surround speakers to better approximate the sound of a full-sized movie theater. There is no better deal than the
Emotiva ERD-1 surround speakers - $280/pair shipped right now.
So we're left with somewhere between $600 to $1100 for your front three speakers now, with you preferring to keep the cost on the lower end.
I have three good suggestions for you:
A) we can stick with Emotiva. What I love most about their
ERM-6.2 speakers is that they are adjustable - much like a professional monitor speaker. You can slightly boost or cut the treble and mid-bass output to account for placement, which is a great advantage. Three, identical ERM-6.2 across the front would be excellent and would work really well for your budget.
B) you could go with Ascend Acoustics front speakers, which have a stunningly good tweeter for their price-range and are superbly accurate and neutral. For your room size, I would recommend a pair of CBM-170SE for the front L/R and a CMT-340SE C for the center, which, together, would be a bit less expensive than three of the Emotiva ERM-6.2.
C) you could go with three speakers from the SVSound S-Series. There are the STS-01 towers, SCS-01 larger bookshelf and SBS-01 smaller bookshelf speakers to choose from. These are very neutral speakers.
Which of the three are the "best"? Personally, if you favor absolute detail in the higher frequencies, the Ascend speakers have the best tweeter. But the Emotiva speakers are adjustable, which makes them a "safer" bet as they can be adjusted to account for placement as well as for personal preference.
If you can place the speakers "ideally", meaning that the front three speakers will all be at seated ear height and will all have distance of at least 2-3 feet from any wall, I would personally favor the Ascend speakers. But if your speakers will be placed closer to any wall or in any sort of "less than ideal" position, I would favor the Emotiva speakers. The SVSound S-Series speakers are great "all around" speakers and are less picky about where you place them. They are also the only tower offering. I give the edge to the Ascend tweeter and the Emotiva adjustability, but if you want tower front speakers or you just want speakers that will be neutral and work well in almost any placment, the SVSound S-Series speakers are a wonderful choice.
Sum it all up!
- GIK Acoustics Room Treatment package for a MUCH improved acoustic environment - about $800
- dual SVSound PB12-NSD subwoofers for even, linear, strong bass throughout the entire room with very low distortion and flat frequency response, even at very high output levels - about $1200
- two Auralex GRAMMA decoupling risers so that those PB12-NSD subwoofers don't bother your neighbors or other people in the house and so that you can have undistorted, "tight" bass in your theater - $100
- one pair of Emotiva ERD-1 di/bi-pole surround speakers - $280
- your choice of: 3 Emotiva ERM-6.2; 1 pair Ascend CBM-170SE with CMT-340SE C center; or SVSound S-Series STS-01 towers, SCS-01 larger bookshelf/center, SBS-01 smaller bookshelf Front Speakers
A KILLER package - all within your budget
Best of luck!
