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Tired of HT

Okay, here's my situation. I've grown tired of the home theater surround sound deal. I have a Rotel amp, Rotel pre pro, paradigm speakers (20 v.3 fronts, cc470 center, atom rears, pdr10 sub, audioquest, Wadia i170, Cambridge DACmagic, etc. For me, it's about 80-90% music and 10-20% movies. My real love is the music. Where do I do from here? I would like a recommendation on a new amp, pre pro, and speakers. My budget is reasonable, but not necessarily cheap if you know what I mean. Thanks
bob99or
macrojack
1,303 posts
 
If you value music more than sound effects, and it sounds like you do, then dispense with the entire HT hoax and apply your resources to a nice two channel music system. Home theater is car stereo brought indoors.

Congratulations to you for recognizing as much. And good luck in your quest. Tubes are not necessary.
tholt
551 posts
 
To clarify if it wasn't clear before, my suggestion is to transform your current surround sound setup into a competent 2 channel setup via a good 2 ch amp and preamp. The receiver would be used for movies only (powering the center and rear channels) or if you wish to hook up some sort of surround music capability. this would have both an HT set up and a 2 strictly 2 channel set up in one system.

Home theater is car stereo brought indoors.
What to say to that? what the hell are you talking about?
shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
7,477 posts
 
HT Hoax is only a hoax if you expect to get the same two channel sound (when playing just two channels) from a similarly priced HT system as you get if you poured ALL your money simply into Source pre-amp amp and two speakers.

This fact is self evident: 6 cheaper speakers and an amplifier that does 6 channels all at once cannot possibly equal what you can achieve with a similarly priced two channel setup.
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johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
06-27-09: Stringreen
After much experimenting, I found that I needed 2 totally separate systems. The Surround sound is in one room, and the high end stereo in another.
That's how my systems have evolved too. The HT system is a 7.1 system that evolved out of a stereo I built up 12 years ago.

In the meantime I had a modest 2-channel system in the living room for quieter music--small group jazz, acoustic pop, and chamber music. When I switched this system to LP-based, the result was so much more musically satisfying that I upgraded the entire chain, making it a 2-channel music-only system that scales reasonably well from solo to orchestra and big band.

I use the 7.1 channel mostly for HT now except for the occasional multichannel SACD and DVD-A. I do almost all music listening on LP in the 2-ch. living room system.
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