First off if you are really interested in specifics about the Aperion speakers I would post your questions over in there own forum (not sure how active it is) as you will likely get more informed answers about how their speakers perform and what combinations of speakers work best for various purposes. Never gone there myself but my gut tells me you will get good straight shooting advice as I don’t ever remember seeing and Aperion owner trashing other brands out in the more public forums like this one.
If you plan on listening mostly to 2 channel music w/o a subwoofer I would prioritize your L/R mains. My preference would be the 6Ts to get the lower extension the increased efficiency is a bonus but not IMO a reason to buy them. If you plan on using your sub for 2 channel music or most of your listening will be multi-channel 5.1 I think the 4T and 5T will do fine and I don’t see any significant difference between them based on their specs, however someone with real listening experience may say otherwise. When buying your mains keep in mind you will likely want to get the matching center when you are ready to upgrade that.
Also if you always plan to use a sub for music don’t discount the idea of getting some good bookshelf speakers. Your room sounds almost like mine 13 x 21 x 8-12 vaulted open on one side to the kitchen/dining room. I have both Axiom M80 towers and M22 bookshelf speakers and when both are paired with a sub I can barely tell the difference with the mid bass sounding a little bit more full on the M80 sub combo.
Seating distance will have more impact on how loud your speakers sound to you than the room volume. The volume will have more impact on how the bass sounds/feels. This calculator will give you an idea of how much power you need to get a desired sound level.
http://www.crownaudio.com/apps_htm/designtools/elect-pwr-req.htm
For example if you plug in 2 meters distance, 91dB 6T efficiency, 85dB SPL (OSHA level where permanent hear damage starts occurring) and 18 dB headroom (enough for all but the most demanding classical music) you only need 63w/channel. Note that most AVRs don’t actually deliver their full rated power to all channels continuously nor to they usually need to, for example my Denon rated at 120w/ch only gives me about 103w/ch when running more than 2 speakers.
My only concern about the 4B over the 5B surrounds is that they only extend down to 120Hz. If your AVR doesn’t allow individual setting for each set of speakers then that could cause you to either have to set your crossover pretty high (80Hz is usually as high as you want) or loose out on the some of the 80-120Hz information in your surround channels. Even if you can set the surround crossovers separately anything above 80Hz could become localizable to the subwoofer.
Also for surrounds you might also consider 4BP or 5BP (similar but not as big of crossover issues). Direct radiating vs. multi-polar surrounds and rears is often a heated debate. My preference is multi-polar as most information in the 5/6 7.1 surround channels either in movies or music is ambient which I fell is better reproduced by multi-polar speakers unless your in a really big room with side walls 5 or more feet from the nearest listener.
If your not sure how well your center channel will match your mains I would hold off on buying the surrounds. Get the mains and set up your system and see how it sounds with your current center. Meanwhile, if the boss allows, move your old mains to surround positions as surrounds matching the rest of your system is least important. This will give you a full 5.1 system to play with. If having an unmatched center is distracting then order a matching Aperion center and continue using your old mains as surrounds until you can afford to switch to smaller ones.
Another option if the center doesn’t match well is to run a phantom center. Just tell your AVR you don’t have a center speaker in the setup menu and it will route that information to the L/R mains. You loose the advantages of being able to boost the center volume for louder dialogue and having the center channel sounds anchored to the screen but it may be more tolerable than using a mismatched center.
Sorry for such a long post but you have a lot of possible options available, so there’s lots of info to cover. You really should go out and demo more speakers. Since music is such an important part of your planned listening getting the right sounding L/R (possibly center for multi-channel) speakers is very important.
Cheers,
Dean
P.S. Just saw Roger That’s comment on trade up. Very good call as is his comment on 2.0 vs 5.0.
