(2014-01-28, 18:20)joelbaby Wrote: This includes the Onkyo which I have heard in the shop.
Did you demo it in the middle of the store aisle? They usually don't have this type of boxed speaker in the proper demo room. I wouldn't judge this type of speaker by listening to it in a very big open space. The Klipsch and Andrew Jones floor standing speakers that I bought sounds terrible at Best Buy Magnolia demo room. With proper placement and calibration, it sounds great in my theater room and master bedroom.....
(2014-01-28, 18:20)joelbaby Wrote: To answer a question from Bluray: Speaker bundles with 5 small speakers and one woofer hardly ever sound good when you compare them to even a cheap set of speakers in tall cabinets. This includes the Onkyo which I have heard in the shop. Usually - only the high quality 'small' speakers can produce good mid and low range. Klipsch Quintet speakers are good for a 'small' system, and reasonably priced, and also Paradigm Cinema CT90. In most bundled 5.1 systems (including the Onkyo) the sub is doing a lot of compensation for the missing sound that the small speakers cannot make. The problem with this is that you lose some of the stereo/surround effect because a sub usually goes in the corner of the room. With the onkyo system, some of the sounds will be directional (going through all your speakers), but many of the important sounds will just be generated by the sub. The sub should just be for the very low frequencies which are non-directional.
Now, you start to loose me on this. You dismissed the bundle speakers I listed (Energy Take Classic, Yamaha, Onkyo and Andrew Jones) in my earlier posts, but you praised Klipsch Quintet and Paradigm Cinema CT90 boxed speakers. I happen to own Klipsch Quintet in the past, and it sounds very similar to the Yamaha in my list. For about the same price, Yamaha included a very nice AVR too. Quintet does looks cleaner and nicer though. After owning both Energy Take Classic and Klipsch Quintet, I'm taking Energy Take Classic over it too. It sounds very similar in my room, but Energy looks classier in my room.
Oh, by the way I never say these package speakers sounds better than the bigger floor standing speakers. I never compare my smaller Andrew Jones floor standing speakers in my master bedroom to my bigger Klipsch floor standing speakers with two 12" subwoofers in my theater room either. As I mentioned many times, for its small size and price the speaker packages I listed sounds quite good. The 5.1 systems in my lists will sounds better than any LEDTV speakers, and it will produces very nice surround sounds for the money.
If you don't have a lot of money to buy a bigger and more expensive surround sound system, you should be able to enjoy the surround sounds from the speaker packages that I listed above.....