My new 60" Sony Grand Wega TV has arrived. I am alomst finished building the cabinet for it. On Tuesday, DirecTV will be here to install the new HD satelite dish and I will be up and running.....except I want a new home theater system.

I dont know much about them, but Ive seen some 7.1 systems in the $500 price range. I dont mind spending more than that if I need to or if its a good value.

Tell me what you guys have or what you recommend if you were starting from scratch. I will be moving my current stereo and speakers into the bedroom along with my whole entertainment center that is in the living room right now so I have a blank canvas to work with.

A link to the system you recommend and / or where to get the best deal would be appreciated also.

Ice--

It thoroughly depends on how nuts you want to go. If you're not a psycho audiophile, then I recommend .

Onkyo is a fantastic name in home audio, and I have their 6.1 system from last year--the sound is truly mindblowing for an "in-box" system. In fact, it sounds as good as my brother-in-law's component system that ran him >$5000.

If you want to have an HT system that sounds like you broke the bank but really didn't, this is the one for you.

Also, if you're going to go with this, upgrade the speaker wire to something thicker--Monster Cable is pricey, but it is really worth the expense.

How big is the room you're using as your HT?

I can't offer you much advice since I'm a headphones guy, but I know enough that you'll have to tell people about the room (dimensions, seating, open or closed design, etc) you're putting it in to get the best advice.

That Onkyo system is the one I was just looking at after talking to trodgers. He has something very similar. He may have the same one you have from last year. He mentioned though that his "unit" was only about as big as a DVD player and this one looks quite a bit bigger. Thats fine though, i have room for it.

Im a little worried because this seems very cheap to me, although I havent looked at stereo equipment in quite some time and things may have come way down in price. I was expecting to spend $1000 at the very least when i first decided to look into a new system. The JBL front speakers I have right now cost in the $250-$300 each neighborhood about 10 years ago. Its been a long time, but I think I paid something like that for them.

From memory, my room is about 22' X 17'. I guess you would say its a closed design since it has walls on all sides. It has one door going to a bedroom, 2 larger openings to hallways and a fairly large opening that has a counter area and looks thru into the kitchen.

For $25K, I want Bruce Springsteen in my living room

if you can find a store that sells them, i really recommend that you go take a listen.

again, i recommend a $6 set up (or so) as a starter. the $25k per speaker levels are for rich folks and audiophiles. i sti;; suggest you listen to them at the store though -- and bring some of your own music.

I heard Tims Onkyo system and it sounds really good, but then I went back to the store and heard a system that blew me away. I cant decide how much I really want to spend.

Let me ask anyone this. Do speakers get old? In other words, the 10 year old JBL tower speakers that I have still sound pretty damned good to me and I cant imagine they would be worse than the little box speakers you get with the prepackaged systems, even if they are kind of old, but is it possible that Im just used to them and new speakers of the exact same quality would sound alot better because they are new?

In other words, Im thinking of buying the audio/video control box thing seperately and adding other speakers instead of buying the prepackaged system, but I dont know if I need to replace the tower speakers I already have. They were around $250-$300 each when I bought them so they are pretty decent speakers.

If I can do it this way, I can buy the control box, a subwoofer and a middle speaker and keep my tower speakers and my wall speakers (which are about 4 years old).

I would still be spending more moeny this way, but the system has to sound beter with large tower speakers than the small ones you get with the boxed system right?

Also, I built cabinets that the tower speakers are sitting inside. The cabinets look VERY nice. They look custom built because they are, but do I lose sound quality by putting a speaker with a wooden box, inside a wooden cabinet?

There is no back on the cabinet, but the speaker is surrounded by wood on all 4 sides. The back is open and the front has speaker mesh on it. They do sound slighty muffled I think. Anyone think thats a big deal and I should scrap the cabinets even if they look really good and match my other furniture?

With mix and match components, it may be difficult to achieve a seamless sound-stage that movies really benefit from. Anything that distracts from the movie will reduce the immersion.

That said, your older speakers are probably quite fine, and will not begin to really decay for another 10 years or so, depending on the environment(humidity and dust are the chief destroyers of speaker cones).

The home-made cabinets that you made for your speakers are probably reducing the resonant quality that the speaker engineers have designed the enclosure to optimise.

As always, let your ears be the deciding factor. If you cannot tell the difference, that is all that truly matters.

Dude if you wanna go ALL OUT I would TOTALLY recommend buying some nice guitar tube amps and hooking them up... they'd be pretty big but HOLY CRAP do they sound good. I used my fender Hot rodd deluxe to listen to some music (as it's right next to my computer anyway) and I mean... HOLY SHIT! I don't think sound gets any better than that. Get some nice celestion speakers in there and I don't think you'll ever ever ever leave.

Speakers don't really deteriorate much with age, but new driver technology et al means that new designs should be significantly better than old, all else being equal.

More importantly though, by putting your speakers inside another enclosure you're seriously compromising their potential by introducing new colourations and resonances into their design. If you audition some good speakers that you've spent some time listening to with music of your own choice, you may not feel the urge to build cabinets for them. Again, check out B&W (as well as other makes) - they look as good as they sound.