hometheaterblog.com — Interesting article about Bose home theater speakers and why they might not be the holy grail of audio, as many would believe. The article continues into 2 parts, goes into quite a bit of detail about why people have come to associate Bose with quality and then goes onto explain some of the problems associated with the speakers.
Apr 4, 2006 View in Crawl 4
bigjuicemanApr 4, 2006
Paradigm...err...ParaDIGm<a class="user" href="http://www.paradigm.com/">http://www.paradigm.com/</a>
ron1nApr 5, 2006
Rick and madlvan, Thanks both for your comments / advice, I'll take all that into account as I continue my research. One thing I should have probably made more clear is that the $1000-1500 that I was / am willing to budget was for the speakers alone, I was counting on spending an additional $400-$500 give or take for the receiver. As far as DVD player etc I'm sticking with a Sony DVD player that I've had for about 5 years that I'm still pretty happy with, so no budget for that. So if that changes any of your suggestions or advice please let me know if you don't mind posting again. Btw I stopped by that HT retailer who is offering those Energy speakers at cost, he had the newer line of them hooked up and they did sound pretty damn good, but like Mad had suggested, I'd like to go back by there with one of my movies, something like LotR or something with a really good action scene and give them another run. FYI the offer he's made is $1500 for the 2 front floor standing (C-7's), the center (C-C1), and the two rears (C-R3's) no sub. Sounds like a pretty good deal, but again I'm not sure how this may compare to whatever else is out there, so I'll continue to look around. Thanks again to both of you, and any further feedback is much appreciated.
diggrickApr 5, 2006
The brands that madivan suggested are all good and reputable brands and depending on your listening tendencies some will be better than others. IMHO, I like Denon over Onkyo and Integra. When I bought my receiver about 14 months ago I seriously looked at the Denon 3805 and the Integra line (can't remember the model#) I favored the 3805 for both sound and features although the Integra was solid. (Integra is the higher end line of Onkyo like Lexus to Toyota) In the end I went with a NAD receiver. You sacrifice some features, but the sound, power, and overhead of these guys is impressive and that is what I care about most over having 20 different DSP modes and auto room setup.Since the budget was just for speakers, I would suggest again to invest a good portion of it in the front soundstage. MadIvan is correct about the dipole speakers in the rear (especially for movies) I just didn't recommend them with the budget I thought you were using before because they are relatively expensive b/c you're basically buying 2 speakers in one enclosure. I run Paradigm dipoles in my setup and they do really envelope you in the rear soundfield.With the new budget and still holding on the Paradigm arena since I know the line pretty well, you could step up to the monitor series bookshelf speakers. Similiar in size to the Titans I mentioned before but with better drivers and tweeters which equates to a larger and smoother frequency response. That along with dipoles and/or a better sub should eat up the rest of the cash. Not sure how your setup is, but you will probably want to factor in $100 or so for speaker stands for the front left and right if you go with bookshelves such as the Titans or Monitor 3's. Monitor 5's are large bookshelves with 2 drivers and a tweeter as is the Monitor 7 which has exactly the same speakers as the 5 but is a floorstander and benefits from the extra airspace in the enclosure. Again, you'll find very good Mirage and Energy speakers at similiar price points and I'll let you judge for yourself which you like the best. I would be sure to listen to the Paradigm line though as they are widely known to have enormous bang for the buck. The sound and the build quality is impressive. Don't just take my word for it - do a Google search and check out the reviews and posts on them....you won't find much bad said about them. Whatever you decide I would suggest buying an SPL meter and a good setup disc in order to properly place, sound-level, and set the crossover freq. of your speakers in your environment. Happy AVing.
tonymontanaApr 7, 2006
VALUE + $$$ = PARADIGMALL THE WAY
stevechisnallApr 7, 2006
Well, Bose's QuietComfort Headphones are overpriced. If you want good headphones, which I'm looking for, 90% of my audiophile friends recommend Sennheiser for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they specialize in headphones and nothing else. No speakers, no subwoofers, just headphones. Judging from the headphone audiophile community (www.head-fi.org) I've peeked at, Sennheiser must be doing something right. *shrugs* I don't work for them, I'm just passing on what I've heard my audiophile pals tell me. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.