My front 3 speakers are the Acoustechs that you are considering. For the money, they are outstanding speakers.
In fact, over the course of a month or so, I had Axiom M22TIs, Klipsch RF-35s, etc. in my house. The Acoustech speakers stayed.
Believe what you hear - good speakers matter. Acoustech and BIC might get dissed a bit because of their economical price and many people believe that you have to drop a large amount of cash to get great speakers. This is not always the case.
I'm driving mine with a Pioneer Elite 54TX and also have the Onix XCD-88 player for listening to my CDs. Between the player, receiver and speakers, the sound is pretty nice.
I also have a pair of Infinity RS-1 speakers that I paid $44.00 each for about 7 - 8 years ago. Circuit City typically sold 'em for $99 each, but had a few speacial sales during the year. They are rear-ported speakers, and I thought they sounded kind of bad where I had them located in the bookshelves in the 2nd zone. I ended up taking the speakers downstairs, set the crossover to 80Hz on the Elite and let my 2 - 15" IB subs cover the 80Hz and below frequencies. Man, the old Infinity speakers really shine. For anyone starting out, I'd look at buying 5 of those RS-1s and a good subwoofer. I'm sure the cost wouldn't be too much more than a HTIB combo, but the sound would be 10x better.
Also, Stereophile reviewed the Infinity Primus speakers - which sell for about $160 a pair (street price) as some pretty good speakers.
Enjoy!
