Surround upgrades

[Street]

I'm currently running an old Denon 1910 AVR and was planning on swapping it for a newer Denon. Now as usual everything has escalated and I'm now considering upgrading some other parts of the system as well..

I'm using a pair of QA 2020i for fronts, a 3090Ci center and some older 1010i speakers as the surrounds with a BK XLS200 sub. I started out with the 1010i surround kit about 11 years ago and have upgraded the other parts over the years so the surrounds are the last remaining part of the original system.

I was toying with the idea of getting a new pair of 3030i for the fronts and moving the 2020i to the rears but would the 3030s be overkill? Am I better off just getting a pair of 3020s so all the speakers are the same size?

As I would then have a spare pair of 1010i speakers, my other idea was to use them as front height speakers with the new amp. Would this be a waste of time with the 1010s?

 

[Street]

Nice build!

It's good to have a bit of a sanity check to make sure I'm not just completely wasting my time. Ideally I'd love to go with proper ceiling speakers but the effort involved and the hassle from the missus wouldn't be worth it if I could get similar results from re-purposing my existing surrounds as front heights. I've had a measure up and annoyingly I think the 3030i would be too big. I have to have them in alcoves either side of the TV and the extra height and depth of the 3030i vs the 3020i would mean they would sit quite close to the back and also be a lot taller. I'll have to do some proper measuring tomorrow.

It also seems that the wall mounts for the 1010i are like gold dust now so that may throw a spanner in the works unless I can find some generic ones that look decent.

 

[Street]

I bit the bullet and went for the 3020i instead of the 3030i. I measured them up and the 3030s would have been far too big in the space I have available.

I got them rigged up last night, remounted my 2020s as surrounds and ran the Audyssey setup. I'm not sure if there is much difference with having the 3020s over the 2020s at the front but having the 2020s as surrounds instead of the 1010s definitely improves things. I think the 1010s were a bit underwhelming at the back but after a few tests it feels as if the sound properly surrounds me now. Now onto the amp..