Receiver/speaker/subwoofer question

[jlvowell]

I'm a complete novice at electronics, and an old one at that. We recently bought a new HDTV flat panel TV and my son-in-law tells me we need a receiver with speakers and a subwoofer. We already have a new DVD player. My question is: If I buy them separately on Ebay or elsewhere for that matter, can I mix and match? In other words, different brand names for all?

Thanks,

jlvowell

 

[mtrycrafts]

I'm a complete novice at electronics, and an old one at that. We recently bought a new HDTV flat panel TV and my son-in-law tells me we need a receiver with speakers and a subwoofer. We already have a new DVD player. My question is: If I buy them separately on Ebay or elsewhere for that matter, can I mix and match? In other words, different brand names for all?

Thanks,

jlvowell

Yes, different brand names are fine if they meet your needs.
All depends what you want out of your new TV and audio system. Certainly the small speakers in the TV has limits and restrictions.
Then, your space where you are planning to place all this in, how well will it accommodate all yoru new toys.

 

[HiDefGuru]

IMy question is: If I buy them separately on Ebay or elsewhere for that matter, can I mix and match? In other words, different brand names for all?

It would actually be best to go that way.

Check out the Home Theater Basics Article and go from there

 

[Davemcc]

All in one solutions are generally not very good. I went through a few of them before I finally got serious. As you look at each component, there are certain companies' products that will stand out among the various competitors. For receivers, Onkyo, Denon, Pioneer and Yamaha make a fine receiver. There are literally too many speaker companies to list. That should be a personal choice after auditioning a wide variety of speakers available to you. When it comes to subwoofers, it should be noted that some brands that offer fine speakers simply don't offer a decent subwoofer to go with their speakers. Again, there are some brands of subwoofers that stand out from the pack, Hsu research, SVS, Velodyne, JL Audio to name a few.

Careful shopping combined with adequate research and personal auditioning can get you an excellent system for whatever budget you set, much better than the all-in-one pre-packaged solutions.

 

[Alamar]

I'm a complete novice at electronics, and an old one at that. We recently bought a new HDTV flat panel TV and my son-in-law tells me we need a receiver with speakers and a subwoofer. We already have a new DVD player. My question is: If I buy them separately on Ebay or elsewhere for that matter, can I mix and match? In other words, different brand names for all?

Thanks,

jlvowell

If you are happy with the audio that you are getting now you don't really "need" to buy anything else. On the other hand if you WANT to have surround sound to hopefully improve the feeling of "being there" for your movies then that's cool.

Usually you can buy a receiver, most speakers, and subwoofers from different companies and you'll be just fine ..... actually you'll be better off doing it this way.

The only thing that I wouldn't mix & match too much on are your speakers. You want your center, front left, front right [and back left and back right] speakers to sound similar to each other so if a noise / converstaion / sound effect travels from one speaker to another so it doesn't sound funny. Often I would tend to go with speakers from the same company as this tends to help.

The receiver and subwoofer can be from almost any company and it won't matter per-se.

I would advise getting the speakers first and to try to stick to "8 ohm" speakers just so you won't have a hard time finding a receiver that can power the speakers properly. Also, as mentioned above, if you can listen to the speakers first it would be a really good idea to do so. While eBaying speakers will be less expensive you may not have a good idea of the quality you're getting.

BTW: What is your intended budget?? Also how much "trouble" do you want to go through searching for the right set of equipment.