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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
 

Congratulations!! Very happy to see your project had the desired result. The room looks great and nice compromise on the speakers with the sliding to the R when not in use. You can get felt pads to slide furniture at amazon if you need them. Just stick them under the speaker and leave them, they slide real easy. Looks fantastic!

mahler123
3,037 posts
 

In the title the OP asks if it is worthwhile to upgrade speakers. I have 3 systems, a dedicated 2 channel, a basement man cave where I can do what I want with surround sound, and another surround system in our living room. I have the same WAF issues the OP has in the last system, and after experimenting with in wall speakers and other sonic compromises in living room, I decided it isn’t worth it. We don’t watch much in then the way of action films (no Marvel here) and dialogue is the key thing. So no need for Atmos or anything gimmicky there, but a lot of attention paid to voices and the center channel. When I listen to music in this system it is usually background while cooking or doing the taxes.

  I should add that the living room is decent mid Fi equipment and still sounds better than most systems that I owned until I really got into audiophila about 25 years ago.  Anthem Room Correction was a major upgrade

hikerneil OP
21 posts
 

Improving my center channel (for dialogue quality) was absolutely one of my top priorities, and I feel like I accomplished that goal.  We now rarely turn on Closed Captioning, and we find voice quality to be much better - so I feel like we nailed that goal.

We watch lots of movies and I feel like our favorites tend to be more along the lines of drama than big action films, so dialogue is definitely a high priority for us as well.  That said, I love and value the surround experience and my wife values it as well.  I'm always amazed that out of nowhere a sound will appear out of my surrounds and it adds greatly to any movie.  I cannot imagine watching movies without my surrounds.  Even a series like Survivor now places heavy emphasis on a quality sound mix, including content through those surrounds.

I feel like we ended up with the perfect combination of maintaining a high WAF, while also obtaining a very high level of surround sound experience.  For me, a 5.1.2 experience may be good enough for this room.  I need to hear some more examples of 7.2.4 (or higher) before making any further investments in processor, redesign, and wiring runs.

And lastly, I agree with your approach of having a separate room for 2-channel audio.  I love to go to my 2 channel room to listen to music, it's a totally different listening experience in that room (and it fails the WAF test miserably).

squared80
57 posts
 

No mention of acoustic treatments?

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