First time HT audio advice?

[yobear]

Please help if you can? I'm fairly new to the home theater seen and recently decided to build one in my basement. I've elected to go with a Front DLP projector and now I have a decision to make for the audio. I've choose to go with Polk Audio for speakers and Harman Kardon for receiver.

Will this make for a nice set-up? Is it over kill for a room size of 13X19? or are these not suitable for HT setups? Any help?

Front's - Polk Audio RTi10
Center - Polk Audio CSi3
Surround - Polk Audio RTi6
Rear - Polk Audio RTi6
Sub - Pold Audio PSW505

Receiver - Harman Kardon AVR630

The total cost for this set-up is 1620.66 as I receive an employee discount.

Thank again
vr
Scott

 

[Leprkon]

Looks like solid choices and good pricing. I might suggest you sink a little more into the center piece, if you are planning on watching a lot of movies, since most of the dialog comes out of the center channel. You might go with the CSi5 center and then could live with maybe RTi8's as mains or maybe a PSW404.

if you do more music than movies, the system should be fine as is.

maybe Polkfan will stop by and fill you in on his thoughts. He has alot more experience with them than I do.

 

[yobear]

Thank you. I'll go ahead and take your advice. I'll simply budget in the CSi5 for my center. This system will be utilized almost exclusively for HT use the only time I'll listen to music is while viewing live concerts on DVD. One last question about my choice in rear and surround speakers some people are telling me the RTi6 are to big for this use. Are they? The polk site recommends the use of some weird looking speaker for surround the FXi5 I think.
Links:

FXi5
RTi10
RTi6

PSW505

 

[Leprkon]

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish. They will sound great using SACD or DVD-audio as a source.

They will be a little less effective for home theatre. The driver on the 6 is actually woofer size (generally accepted to be 6 inches or larger) and will produce great bass and moderate mid-range.

The problem is that bass is omnidirectional, while midrange tones are much more directional. The bass you have in your primes and sub is more than enough for your application. You don;t really need any more.

The midrange tones are very effective for home theatre because they spread the sound around. It carries the motion with it. The whole idea behind surround sound is for the sound to be coming specifically from a certain point (whether behind you or in front) to match the action on the screen. A 5 or 5 1/2 inch midrange will be a much more specific sound source than the 6 1/2 woofer. If you really want dynamic sound FOR HT, then go with a smaller unit than the RT6.

The strange ones you saw on the Polk website were probably the triangular FX-series. They are designed with two inputs on the same speaker for a bipole/dipole set-up. The technogaga on bipole/dipole is best left to others from this site, but simply put, they are optimized for SACD and DVD-audio.

The RT4 shelfs or even the Atrium series (which are really easy to mount) will do just as good a job for most applications.

Good luck with your soon to be new toys.

 

[yobear]

Thanks you been very helpfull