Best ht speaker systems

Dunno anything about Boston but the best HT system I have ever heard was one set up at the HK AV Show a couple of years back. The room was GIGANTIC and the system was an all McIntosh electronics (using souped up Denon flagship A1HDC/UDC based systems) to McIntosh power amps (looked like many mono blocks) to Focal Utopia Be speakers.

The room was extremely large and the volume level turned up pretty high but it was dead quiet when the soundtrack was, and sharp, superbly positioned when needed. The scene was the Hurt Locker sniper shootout. It was like the bullet pierced the air from behind the listener and ended smack into the middle of the screen.

There is no definitive "best" of anything. There are way too many variables involved. The "best" you can hope for is to find something that works well in your system. You can then say it's the "best" for you until you find something you think is better !!!!

For "reasonably"-priced speakers, it is hard to go wrong with the Gallo Reference series. They have *excellent* dispersion, top-quality construction, and their Ref AV series are *made* for home theater use. I currently use their Reference 3.qs for my Front L/R, their Ref. AV Cneter for my Center channel, and their Ref. AVs for the surrounds.

The speakers are all timbre-matched, meaning that sound transitiions from side to side and front to back are seamless. Additionally, the Ref AVs mount very discreetly on the walls and, in fact, are designed to use the "boundary effect" afforded by such placement. The bass provided by these is astonishing and the WAF is very high.

I would recommend you purchase something like a Velodyne DD-Series subwoofer to handle the bottom-octave chores. They come with massive digital amps and room-correction software that will tailor their response perfectly to your room's anomalies.

All of these can be purchased from Audiogon gently used. I have about $11k worth of speakers for which I paid less than $5k - and every single one of them still had 80% of the mfgr. warranty still in effect...

I am also reading VERY good things about the Tekton Pendragons and M-Lore speakers as well as the Golden Ear Triton 2s and 3s. Look into these as well as the Gallos. And the new Gallo Classico Series is garnering rave reviews as well.

ANY of the aforementioned speakers lines will provide you with *superb*-quality sound for very reasonable money...

-RW-