2. home-theater
  3. 182764-179433

My Home Theatre Room Challenges - Is It Worth It To Upgrade Speakers

I have a very nice 2-channel stereo room where I love to listen to music by myself.  I am happy with the equipment and set-up in this room (at least for now).

Our family room (on the other side of our home) serves as our Home Theatre room and my wife and I watch a movie in this room together almost every night.  We recently upgraded to a Sony 83" A90J television and we love the picture quality.  

I consider sound quality to be just as important as picture quality when it comes to watching a good movie.  The 5.1.2 sound equipment in this room currently features:

  • Yamaha RX-1080 Surround Processor
  • Paradigm Prestige 15 Front Speakers on stands 
  • Martin Logan ESL Center Channel
  • Polk PSW1000 Powered Subwoofer
  • Paradigm Millenia 1 Overhead Speakers
  • Polk In Wall Rear Speakers
  • Room size = 20' wide X 18' deep (no rear wall)
  • Ceiling Height = 20' tall

The room has two big challenges:

  • WAF is critical - this is our family room, having front speakers that sit 4' out into the room is not going to happen
  • there are two couches that sit directly between the Front L&R speakers and our two primary listening chairs.

I would love to make a big and impactful improvement in sound quality in this room. I am currently considering replacing my two front main speakers (Paradigm Bookshelf 2-way speakers with 6" drivers) with full-sized speakers.  I am considering speakers, like perhaps a nice used pair of B&W 803 D2's, with the intent to dramatically improve base and be able to better fill the large room with sound.

Question:  Will the two couches block the sound improvement that I am trying to achieve?  (Right now my bookshelf speakers sit on stands which allows the soundwaves to not be blocked by my couches.)   Does this upgrade of front speakers in my large room seem like a logical first step?  I would love to hear from someone else who possible made some similar changes.

Thanks!

hikerneil
kota1
2,706 posts
 

+1, fantastic plan, let us know how it works out!

wspohn's avatar
wspohn
608 posts
 

Full range main speakers are a necessity but augmenting with powered subwoofers is also a good idea.

Even more important is to have the room analyzed, treated if necessary and set up properly,

sunshdw's avatar
sunshdw
256 posts
 

I would also throw out jumping up to an Anthem MRX740. Having their room correction software will also make a big jump in the sonic output. 

panzrwagn's avatar
panzrwagn
537 posts
 

The basic premise of a surround sound system is to replace the room acoustics with the surround sound acoustical environment. To succeed at that room treatment is an absolute necessity. Given that your room is almost a cube, you are going to notice a huge difference from sidewall panels and bass traps. The ceiling will also benefit from acoustical panels, but at 20 ft high, you likely don't have the equipment or experience to do-it-yourself.

Our living room ceiling slopes from 12 to 15'  with a lot of glass on the side behind the listener and 4 - 2X4 ft and 4- 2X2 ft 2" panels, covered to match the white ceiling absolutely transformed the room from unlistenable to pretty good. It even makes conversation easier. 

Definitely match your RCL speakers and at a minimum add another Polk subwoofer.  Replacing it with a pair of SVS (your choice of model0 would be even better.

Absolutely recalibrate your system using the Yamaha YPAO tool, then tune it by ear to your taste. Especially listen for speech intelligibility. Some TV shows (Billions, for example) seem to almost whisper their soundtracks, I suppose to make the script sound more conspiratorial. As a result it can be very difficult to follow if the room is just bouncing sound off all the walls. Again, in our treated room, soundtracks became much easier to understand - without raising the volume - after we treated and recalibrated the system.

Good luck!

kota1
2,706 posts
 

@panzrwagn 

It would be great if you could post some pics, thanks

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