Home theater versus excellent two channel

[ProfessorTim]

What speakers would give me good surround sound with an AV receiver and universal player, and also give me wonderful two channel sound for classical music?

 

[Lincoln]

You don't mention your budget but I've been extremely impressed with my NHT SB3s. They sound wonderful, play low enough to listen to 2-ch without the sub, as a matter of fact I rarely use my sub for any listening with these as my mains and surrounds. I use an NHT M6 as my center b/c it's a better driver match to the SB3 then NHTs recommended SC2 center speaker. They retail for $300 ea, sealed box design, they do need stands (I use 24" Lovan Ballet II stands which are $200 pr), and they are not as fussy about placement near the rear wall as most of the speakers I've owned. In my environment where placement far away from walls is not possible they sound better then my coveted Celestion SL6S and my B&W 601 S3s (with port plugs). Now in a better room I'd still pick the Celestions for classical music but never would I try to use these for HT and the NHTs are 99% as good without all the placement headaches. About the only speakers under $1K pr that I would consider instead of the SB3 would be a Dynaudio Audience 42, very revealing, accurate and natural sound but again I'm not sure about placement with these since I haven't tried a pair at home yet (I'm working on it).

 

[TEvo]

May I ask what you are using to drive the SB3's?

 

[Lincoln]

I'm using an HK DPR 2005 (digital path recvr) and I'm very impressed with this recvr. Before that I was using a Sony TAE9000ESD preamp with an old Kenwood 5 ch amp, this also sounded very good with the NHTs. I've also tried my Perreaux 2150B (also with the Sony Preamp), this combo sounds the best but I don't have space in my current equipment rack for this amp and it's small difference over the HK recvr. All my electronics work well with the NHTs. With the Celestions only the Perreaux amp sounds good (I haven't tried them on the new HK recvr but they sound terrible with the Kenwood amp and were just OK on my old HK 695i 2-ch recvr).

 

[markw]

think music, not movies when shopping.

The trick to what you want is that when shopping for speakers, don't listen to DVD's. Listen to yourtwo channel music. Once you have a system that sounds excellent for music, it will excell at HT as well. simply get the matching center (and preferably the surrounds) and you will be in business

Unfortuantly, the opposite does not hold true. Systems that sound great for HT many times disappoint on music.

Likewise, check how your processor handles the subwoofer signal. Sometimes it's not as logical as one would hope. It may or may not be active when using non-digital sources. A simple solution is to run the subwoofer at the speaker level, set the speakers to "large" and ignore the LFE outputs on the processor.

 

[TEvo]

Thanks for the response. I was just curious as there doesn't seem to be many NHT folks around (or they are very quiet...).

With the SB3s I found they seem to want (need?) an amp with some muscle to sound their best at anything other than low or mid levels. These things really sing when given sufficient headroom to strut their stuff.

A C320BEE (50wpc) does a good job but I think they don't have enough power to really let them sing. But then... I have them in bedroom and most of the material that gets played isn't too demanding (jazz, vocals, pop).