I give up on HT

I gave up on HT a long time ago when my Lexicon CP1 became obsolete overnight. This unit was $1600 new and the price dropped faster than Bill Clinton's pants at a New Years eve party. Someone has been trying to offload a CP1 for several months and the price is down to $85.00! (This is a steal for a wonderful piece of gear). Accurate gear, especially speakers, have no place in HT. Get a pair of big, fat speakers with overblown bass like Polk 10s or Cerwin Vegas and put this system in another room. That TV between your speakers is ruining your image and especially depth.

So true! Even for an apartment dweller like me, I moved the tv to the long wall of the living room, got a pair of Mission 733i for the fronts and a cheap subwoofer. Use phantom mode which is very natural sounding with the little Missions, enjoy movies just as much.Best of all what the move did for my main system in terms of imaging.

I don't have any choice but to combine HT and stereo. Elgordo has made the key point in why this doesn't work well....lack of imaging and lack of soundstage depth due to the TV (I have a 50" RPTV) between the speakers. I've pulled the front L&R speakers out 2 feet in front of the TV and, while this helps, it doesn't solve the problem. Was listening to Dave Brubeck the other day. The piano was clearly coming from behind and outside the right speaker and drums behind the left. That was good. Then the alto sax came in, dead center (where it belonged) but it sounded like the sax player was sitting in my lap. If you want optimal sound, you need to seperate HT form stereo.

What you can do is run the main two front speaker directly from the PFR preamp through the amp, to preserve the high end sound you desire; and run the other channels through the HT decoder for movies. This will mean using a separate amp to power the surround speakers. Get the best of both worlds. The fronts will have more information than normal because they are two channel, but its better than nothing.

As one such person, who has but one room; I 'hear' all the concerns.I have a stand-alone processor.It has rcas out for all channels. From fronts out,I take a pair of ics;plug them into the aux of my pre. I get true "fronts" information in HT.I switch back to cd input for 2 ch. listening. Then I throw a blanket over the tv for 2 ch listening. No processor/pre is as good as a quality 2 ch.pre amp. This method gives me the best under such circumstances.