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Newbie - Replacing front speakers & going 5.0! Advice needed :)

Hi everyone,

This is my first post on an AV forum, so please be gentle.

I have come here to get the best from my set up, share my experiences and learn more about audio. I currently have the following which I purchased around 6-9 months ago from Richer Sounds:

  • Front Speakers - Monitor Audio Bronze 2
  • Centre Speaker - Monitor Audio Bronze Centre
  • AV Receiver - Yamaha RX-V481
  • Cable - Chord Company C-Screen
  • Banana Plugs: Cambridge Audio V2
I listened to the Bronze 6's recently and absolutely loved them, they sounded amazing compared to the Bronze 2's. I plan to move by Bronze 2's to the back and use them as my rear speakers so I can get the Bronze 6's for the front and have a 5.0 set up. I don't plan on going 5.1 as I live in a top floor flat, floor standers will provide enough bass.

I enjoy TV, movies & music. I probably care about music quality first, movie quality/experience second. 

I wouldn't mind stretching the budget a little bit and getting a floor stander from the new Monitor Audio Silver 6G range, but my OCD says to get the Bronze 6's so my set up is uniform.

I also wouldn't mind spending a little bit extra on cable/banana plugs if the extra money is worth it for floor standers.

I am fairly new to this and £699 is a fair amount of money to me so I want me make sure I won't have any issues with acoustics, sound reflections, speaker placement, bass, clarity, bottlenecks, surround sound and anything else which I need to consider!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated :)
dan89
auxinput
2,920 posts
 

I will have to agree to disagree with Erik here. While many love room correction, I have not had good results with it. I have worked with super high end Dirac Live processors as well as low-cost receivers. In either case, the audio just sounds more natural to me without automated room correction. Manual EQ can be helpful, if you know what you want to do.

Since your primary goal is music sound quality, I will agree with Erik on this point to buy the best speakers you can for left/right. Go for at least the Silver 300 model if you can, which has a dedicated and better voiced midrange (very important for music). The Silver 300 shares the same tweeter as the Bronze series, so voicing will not be that different for anything above 3khz (not as bad as combining two separate speaker manufacturers).

From a Home Theater / Movie standpoint (which is my primary goal), I feel that matching the voicing of the three front speakers (left/center right) is very critical. Matching the surround speakers is not as important here, but it’s a "nice to have". The absolute most important speaker for home theater is the center channel. That’s what I would upgrade first, then follow the left/right upgrades when I could.

erik_squires
16,060 posts
 
Hi Aux,

Well, I never said all room correction was good sounding but that it was a good way to match otherwise different speakers.

Personally I use miniDSP and custom settings, and can get seamless sound out of 3 very different models of main speakers, plus the subwoofer.  I may be cheating, since I made all 3 of those speakers. :) Different parts and costs but same tonal balance.

YMMV

Best,


E
soix
9,456 posts
 
Agree with above.  Nice choices with speakers and receiver BTW.  If music is a priority, get the best front L/R speakers you can afford.  I'd listen to the silvers and see if they sound significantly better to you than the bronze.  If so, save up your sheckles and get those.  As auxinput mentioned they'll obviously have the MA house sound and will probably match just fine with your center (as Erik mentioned YPAO may even help further with this), and the benefits on 2-channel music will likely far outweigh any minor HT discontinuities given your priorities.  Best of luck. 

dan89 OP
5 posts
 
Thank you everyone for your advice, I will definitely be comparing the Bronze 6's against the Silver 300 & maybe even the Silver 500. There is quite a big price difference, so they would need to really blow me away to justify the extra "sheckles" :)

Slightly concerned about mismatching my front speakers if auxinput thinks this is critical for home cinema, whilst music quality is a priority I'm not sure if I would want to sacrifice my home cinema quality too much. Of course... that does justify upgrading the center to a Silver C350 in the future :) I assumed that better front L/R would of improved the home cinema experience, not jeopardize it but it does make sense that the same model speakers work better together. Either way it would sound better then my current set up for home cinema and music would sound even better then with the Bronze 6's. 

I sat and played around with my receiver settings for an hour or so today... what a big difference a couple of tweaks can make. The YPAO doesn't work too well for me, it turned my right speaker down so much the left was completely dominant. Whatever it done to the equalizer however appears to of improved the home cinema sound. 

I plan to wall mount my TV one day so I can move the center speaker onto my TV unit so it is closer to ear level and more center to the TV. That will probably make a big difference. 

Glad to hear your a fan of Monitor Audio @erik_squires , in my opinion the they are the best looking and as I'm British I try to buy British where I can.
erik_squires
16,060 posts
 
Well, I'll have to rethink my recommendations re: room tuning.

I assumed it was at least as good as I was with an EQ, especially Dirac.

I reiterate though, properly calibrated, I've been able to get a number of different speakers to sound well together. However, in all cases, those were speakers with good tweeters that were very smooth up through the top octave, and had very similar, accurate tonal balances.
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