Audyssey actually gives
greater improvement the
worse your room acoustics and speaker placement are.
I'm pretty sure the "sub-woofer" you are using is actually a woofer from a computer sound system. They call them subs in the PC world. The difference? A true sub-woofer will only put out sound at the frequencies that are too low to locate the source of, generally below 100hz. (The lower the frequency the larger the wavelength.) True subs actually work the best with full-range floor-standing speakers crossed over even lower at say 80hz., but they will make a world of difference with "bookshelf" speakers crossed at 100, and so would mounting the latter on stands or good wall mounts-at least a wall shelf of their own, or on the very top of a floorstanding bookshelf, not in it.
Those tiny satellites you mention suffer the same problem as PC set-ups, they don't go low enough, so the "sub" is actually a woofer that may be operating as high as 300hz.-and that is an octave and a half above where we can detect direction, and that really ruins the soundstage. Usually the satellites don't go low enough either, and both leave a lack of lower midrange and upper bass-and even if they don't , produce a lot of distortion in that area at any kind of volume. The 5-6.5 inch size of the driver in a typical PC "sub-woofer" is actually about as small as you should have as the mid-woofer in your main Left-Center-Right speakers. That PC woofer will probably detract from the sound quality of your system-especially if not dead center in the front between your main speakers. In my area and experience, pawn shops don't offer very good deals. They want as much for used musical instruments as I could get them new from discounters, but here in NY they don't take audio, and I have seen decent deals on audio from some pawn shops out west on ebay , so where you are they may be worth checking.
Speakers are the weakest link in the chain of components that is your system, and also a place where you can save a lot of money by doing it yourself, and there are a lot of good kits of proven designs with quality drivers out there, so I'm not talking about experimenting or taking risks, A 500$ pair of store bought speakers typically have 60-80$ worth of parts-and that would be buying those parts at retail. I've put together my HT system with NHT speakers which offered a lot of value new, but were a real bargain used off ebay, but I'm 2/3 of the way through building a high-end pair of speakers for just music listening. Subwoofers are an especially easy and financially rewarding place to start Doing It for Yourself. Most of us seriously into sound now have our computers patched in to our HT/Audio, and in fact, they offer the highest quality source material with HD downloads*. You could get this little outboard device for 40$ that would give you an appropriate digital output for your HT receiver (unless it already has a USB input)
Ha Info U2 24bit 96kHz USB to SPDIF Toslink PCM Ac3 DTS DAC Audio Converter | eBay, or you could upgrade to a better soundcard with the right outputs.
*Compact Disk: 16 bits sampled at 44.1 khz, HD down loads can be 24 bits sampled at 192 khz.!
For speaker kits Parts Express and Madisound provide some attractive options, as well as Zalytron Before you purchase any more equipment, go listen to some live acoustic music, maybe jazz or classical. Close your eyes at points. Then go home and put on something like 'Alice in Chains Unplugged' if you don't actually like classical or jazz. The Cowboy Junkies 'Trinity Sessions' would be even better. This will give you an idea of relative fidelity, which will apply to whatever you listen to. The better fidelity you can obtain, the more you will enjoy your system, whether with music, movies or video games.
BTW: The "350 watts" on the back of that Technics amp was the maximum
input it would draw from the wall, I believe it was rated at about 60 watts per channel into 8 ohms
output. Not a bad amp for two channel music, and I might be interested in buying it if it's still running. Peace...
