Advice needed for new home cinema... speakers?

[legendaryjordan]

So I move into a new house in December and thought I'd wait until Black Friday to see what deals are floating about. I'll probably stick with my 75" ambilight 4k tv for now until OLED becomes a bit more affordable (nearly £3k for 77" is outrageous!)

I'll say in advance I'm totally inexperienced when it comes to speakers and it seems really difficult to get a good idea of great value recommendations. Do I 'need' a receiver? can I get a good quality 5.1 set up for £1200 or is that too ambitious? What would you recommend?

TIA.

 

[lucid]

You're going to want an AV receiver to do the signal handling and amplifications, and then the 5.1 speaker package that will fit your expectations of size and cost.

Your existing telly will have a HDMI ARC connection. Any higher-end new TV is likely to have eARC which is the enhanced version of ARC.Most AV connections work in one direction only, but HDMI ARC is an exception. The connection will accept picture and sound from an external source, but it also passes back audio from a TV to an audio device, in this case an AV receiver. ARC also carries command control signals. This means that when the TV is switched on then the amp wakes up too. The TV remote will also control the volume of the amplifier.

ARC will pass stereo digital signals and Dolby Digital 5.1 signals complete with Dolby Atmos information. eARC fulfils the same role but also adds compatibility for DTS surround signals.

The Yamaha RXV4A is £449 and has support for ARC/eARC. It's a plain 5.1 receiver (no Atmos.) The Yamaha RXV6a (£649) and Denon X2700 (£679) will both work as a basic 5.1 receiver, but that also support a couple of height speakers for Dolby Atmos.

Speakers. Have a look at:

• Wharfedale DX2 @ £399
• Q Acoustics 3010 @ £469
• Monitor Audio Mass @ £659