Best Musical Home Theater Speaker

I clicked on this thread to see what speakers are good for theater. I am quite impressed with some of the new digital theaters being used at the newest Edward's Cinemas in my area. They do music wonderfully well. I would like to build a home version in the near future separate from the two channel, ofcourse. So, lets try to answer NotCat2's question. Any good theater speakers to speak of?

I really appreciate all the feedback. I know most listeners here take their music listening seriously. I have known people over the years that would never listen to anything but 2-channel stereo. Also have a couple of friends that are slowly giving into multi-channel (3) by adding a sub.

But with that said, I currently own several multichannel produced cd's. The future of music collecton will surely include many DVD-Audio and Multi-channel SACD releases. I hope to listen to these selections as they were intended.

These would of course bring us back to the original post question. I know I could get quality musical fronts but was hoping someone would advise on system of speakers like B&W, Paradigm, even Klipsch reference. Something that would match timbre around the room.

Example: I've seen on Vienna Acoustics website where they suggest on a certain channel being matched up with a certain line of their main floorstander.

Thanks again for your time.

nc2

If you're serious about multichannel music, you're really putting yourself in a box. For a while I had matching L-C-R speakers but very non-matching surrounds, and that was just fine on movies. At that point I had something like 8:1 investment ratio in the L-C-R vs the surrounds. Then I got a few DVD-As and discovered that the good ones REQUIRE matching surrounds to be sensible. To an interesting degree this means that you have to have matching speakers, which does limit your choices.

I think I'd agree, though, with some of the others - buy into a product line that you like for music and then add the surround channels later. I won't make a recommendation but rather mention what I've used. My first system used 4 ProAc Tablette 50s and a ProAc CC1 - and it had to have a sub because the little things just don't go down below 50-60 Hz. You can get a setup like this for around your $5K, including the sub but not stands. (The Tablette 50s have been replaced by the Tablette 8, which is even more impressive.)

My current system uses Martin Logan Odyssey / Cinema / Scenarios / Descent and is far outside your $5K budget. You might start with something like Scenarios / Cinema / Grotto and then add either Script surrounds or upgrade the mains to another ML (Aeon / Ascent etc) and repurpose the Scenrios as surrounds.