1. What are your ultimate goals for your home theater experience? - Best quality I can get for my usage within my budget? End of the day I want a 9.1 system with 2 speakers ceiling mounted (or near it). I do probably 25% music, 20% tv, 20% movies, 35% video games. Room is 16x 16
2. Do you run multiple zones? No
3. What's your typical sources for content (ie: cable/dish, streaming, bluray)? music is off my old Zune, streaming, sometimes CDs. TV is 100% streaming, movies are probably 75% streaming, 25% bluray/dvd. Video games are mostly bluray but some DVD and CD and cartridge based gaming.
4. How much power do you need to drive your speakers? and do you want/need room to grow? Current speakers are 91db @ 1 meter @1 watt, 250w max recommended power. Most of the time I probably listen at less than 1 watt / channel. But I like to be able to turn it up now and then. I'd like 100 watt per channel that is actually making close to that 900 watts when running a 9.1 system for those times when I want to feel like the Apollo 13 launch is happening in my living room.
5. What receiver are you currently running? Onkyo 507. This is the most critical piece for me to upgrade.
6. What speakers and sub are you currently running? Floors - Boston Acoustics VR970, center Boston Acoustics VR-12, side/rears - Boston Acoustics HS-450, Sub - Velodyne VA-1250x
I am fairly happy with the front/center/sub, basically to improve front/center, I am thinking I need to spend in the neighborhood of $3-4k. My sub is a 12" active 15" passive, rated 22hz-120hz. So I am missing a bit on the bottom end, but I haven't found any better subs without going into at least $1k. The side/rears are way too big (they are mini-sized floor speakers I got for free). I am trying to decide between book shelf side / rears or to match them with the ceiling speakers.
Basically do I get like 2 of these
https://www.accessories4less.com/make-a-store/item...and 4 of these
https://www.accessories4less.com/make-a-store/item...Or just 6 of the first one? It seems like the rear speakers are mostly for staging.
And for the cost of the receiver, I plan on doing refurbished so "only" $2500 if I go that route with 3 year warranty
https://www.accessories4less.com/make-a-store/item...If I want to upgrade my tower speakers I feel like I have to go with something like
https://www.accessories4less.com/make-a-store/item...or
https://www.goldenear.com/full-range-tower-speaker...or
https://ascendacoustics.com/collections/sierra-ser... those with the ribbon
If I don't need the flagship receiver, I was thinking something like
https://www.accessories4less.com/make-a-store/item...At $1400, that would leave enough for like the Focal towers (3200 pair), Focal center (700), and then go cheap on the rear / surrounds / overhead.