Stereo to AV upgrade

[longitude]

Just joined this forum and have a few questions to help me decide the best route to upgrade. I currently have a 15 year old Denon stereo receiver driving equally old Acoustic Research speakers which have given me excellent service and still sound good. I have a Sony crt tv with Dolby Pro Logic which has given me taste for surround sound so I now want to go for the full surround sound experience. Having owned Denon and read good reviews of the 1604/1804 receivers I've more or less decided that's what I'll buy. I would like to keep the AR speakers as I replaced the bass/mid units a couple of years ago so I'll have to buy rear speakers and a sub woofer. Am I likely to run into a sound field that doesn't quite sound right due to mismatched speakers? I've also read that listening to stereo sources like cd's through an av amp doesn't sound as good as a pure stereo amp. I can understand why in principle this would be true but in practice how much of a compromise is it? Thanks for any help.

[juboy]

Welcome to AV Talk :thumbup:



I think most would agree that the Denon AV receivers you mentioned are at the top of the field in their price range, so you have no worries there.



Speaker wise, although it's daunting to have to think about adding 6 or 7 speakers from scratch, the prices of comparatively high quality budget standmounts these days means it might well be to your best advantage to consider buying and using the same speakers all round for your AV system.



Whilst you can use different speakers in an AV system you are always going to limit the performance of the amp and never quite get the true surround soundstage from your speakers.



Do you have a budget in mind for the new speakers? You might be surprised at what you can get for your money with some careful shopping around. There are some Epos speakers in the Power Buy forum which are considered extraordinary speakers for the money... and they can be yours for only £175 a pair (they won awards in both Hi Fi Choice and Hi Fi News magazines 2003 awards issues)



As far as subwoofers go, unlike regular loud speakers there's an awful lot of budget subs out there which are truly appalling and really not worth the money (no matter how cheap they are).



You really need to be looking at something like the Velodyne VX-10 at around £200 at the minimum.

[Jonas]

Agree with the above, but if you really want to keep your existing speakers consider moving them to surround duties. It's far more important that you match your front L&R and your centre speaker.

[supra]

I'll second the comments of jonas. if you are unsure have a dem and try it with an unmatched centre speaker, you will definately hear the difference.



Good luck with your purchase.